Role Overview
The Senior Project Lead - Cost Optimization Initiative is responsible for the design, planning, and delivery of Save the Children's Cost Optimisation Project. This role ensures alignment with strategic, operational, and financial objectives by developing a multi-year transformation roadmap, driving organizational change, and identifying enterprise-wide efficiency opportunities across support functions and geographies.
Principal Accountabilities
- Lead the Cost Optimisation Project and Organisational Adoption: Lead the design, planning, and delivery of the initiative, ensuring alignment with strategic, operational, and financial objectives. Develop and maintain a phased, multi-year transformation roadmap with prioritised initiatives and clear milestones.
- Lead Change Management and Continuous Improvement: Drive organisational change, stakeholder adoption, and continuous improvement to embed sustainable efficiencies and a culture of operational excellence.
- Identify and Deliver Efficiency Opportunities: Drive the identification, prioritisation, and implementation of enterprise-wide efficiency opportunities across all support functions and organisational levels.
- Drive Cost Optimisation and Benefits Realisation: Establish cost baselines, analyse current and future states, and ensure delivery, tracking, validation, and sustainability of efficiency benefits and cost savings.
- Enhance Efficiency in Service Delivery: Identify opportunities to simplify, standardise, and optimise service delivery models and levels of effort across functions and geographies.
- Lead Programme Governance and Delivery: Establish programme governance structures, oversee workstreams, manage dependencies, and ensure timely delivery of milestones.
- Influence and Engage Senior Stakeholders: Facilitate alignment, decision-making, and collaboration across senior stakeholders, functions, and geographies.
- Leverage AI, Digital Solutions, and Analytics: Promote the use of AI, automation, analytics, and digital technologies to improve operational efficiency and decision-making.
- Manage Programme Risks and Organisational Change: Proactively manage risks, issues, and organisational impacts while ensuring effective change management.
- Embed a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Foster innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement across long-term organisational practices.
Experience and Skills
Essential
- Extensive track record of leading large-scale organisational transformation, organisational redesign, and enterprise-wide change programmes within complex global organisations.
- Significant experience operating within complex INGOs, federated organisations, multinational matrix environments, or similarly complex stakeholder structures.
- Proven ability to design and implement enterprise-wide organisational redesign initiatives across both programmatic and support functions.
- Proven ability to apply excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, collaborating to deliver effective solutions.
- Extensive experience engaging, influencing, and building alignment among Executive Leadership Teams, Global Functional Leaders, Country Directors, and senior stakeholders.
- Ability to lead and influence in highly ambiguous, politically sensitive, and rapidly changing environments.
- Strong knowledge of operating model design, shared services, process harmonisation, workforce optimisation, and finance transformation.
- Exceptional communication, presentation, and stakeholder management capability.
- Experience leveraging AI, automation, analytics, and digital transformation.
Desirable
- Experience leading global transformation programs exceeding USD 100M operational scope.
- Experience working across headquarters/global teams and decentralized country operations.
- Experience supporting ERP transformation initiatives.
- Experience in Lean Six Sigma, continuous improvement, or operational excellence.
- Exposure to enterprise analytics, AI-enabled transformation, or intelligent automation.
Education and Qualifications
Essential
- Master’s degree in Business Administration, Finance, Organizational Development, Strategy, Operations, Management, or a related field.
Desirable
- Professional certification in Programme Management, Change Management, Lean Six Sigma, Organizational Design, or related discipline.
