Head of Indirect Procurement Operations

At Roche you can show up as yourself, embraced for the unique qualities you bring. Our culture encourages personal expression, open dialogue, and genuine connections,  where you are valued, accepted and respected for who you are, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally. This is how we aim to prevent, stop and cure diseases and ensure everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Join Roche, where every voice matters.

The Position

Head of Indirect Procurement Operations

Roche India – Roche Services & Solutions

Hyderabad

A healthier future. It’s what drives us to innovate. To continuously advance science and ensure everyone has access to the healthcare they need today and for generations to come. Creating a world where we all have more time with the people we love.

That’s what makes us Roche.

Healthcare is evolving, and Global Procurement is responding by continuously striving for the highest possible performance, taking innovative and strategic approaches to business and supplier partnerships.  Global Procurement proactively manages the entire supplier ecosystem, making a vital contribution to improving health outcomes, reducing costs for patients and global healthcare systems, and ensuring that Roche continues doing now what patients need next.

The Opportunity

This role sits within the Indirect Procurement Delivery Chapter, which covers the core procurement activities from category management, strategic and operational sourcing, supplier management, contracting, content strategy definition, and execution.

The Indirect Procurement Delivery Chapter comprises many groupings of categories of the same value chain or having commonality, including R&D, Corporate & Commercial Services, Digital & Technology, Facilities & Utilities.

These communities are key enablers of strong category expertise while allowing flexibility in the procurement delivery response to the evolving needs of our customers.

As the Head of Indirect Procurement Operations, you report to the Chapter Lead of Indirect Procurement Delivery and serve as a key member of the leadership team. You will provide vision and guidance to the Delivery Operational procurement capability area while driving operational excellence (across People, Process and Technology)  and harmonization across all categories.

Core Responsibilities

As the Head of Indirect Procurement Operations, you provide the vision and structural leadership for the delivery of indirect services globally. You lead multiple teams of Procurement Experts and Managers, ensuring that the bridge between global strategy and execution is seamless.
According to your experience, knowledge, and the general business/team requirements, your role encompasses, but is not limited to, these core responsibilities:

Strategic Operations & Visionary Leadership

• Indirect Operations Strategy: Act as a thought leader on operational delivery and best practices, shaping the capability area’s vision and our long-term roadmap for Indirect Procurement Operations in alignment with the broader Global Procurement vision.

• Service Delivery Model: Continuous refinement of the service delivery model to ensure it remains agile and responsive to the needs of internal and external stakeholders.

• Value Creation: Drive cost-reduction initiatives and value-improvement programs across the operational lifecycle, ensuring procurement activities contribute directly to Roche’s financial and patient-outcome goals.

• Design and drive Cross- Category operations approach across Indirect and MMC chapters

• Design and drive Cross- Category Delivery Support across Indirect and MMC chapters

• Global Leadership from India Hub: Based in India, provide direct leadership and team management for a truly global, geographically distributed procurement operations team across multiple locations (most sub-team leads in this person’s team are also not based in India).

Operational Excellence

• Performance Accountability: Take full ownership of the performance of Category Operations teams, Professional Service Providers (PSPs) and delivery via Agentic AI/automation tools.

• SLA & KPI Management:

  • Define, monitor, and report on rigorous Service Level Agreements and ensure that all operational purchases are executed with speed, compliance, and quality.

  • Define, monitor, and report for continually improving Operational procurement Improvement per Roadmap.

• Process Harmonization: Standardize operational workflows across different categories to ensure a consistent experience for internal stakeholders, regardless of their location.

• Large-Scale & PSP Operational Delivery: Manage a large operational footprint with a total span of control of ~100 headcount as well as additional PSP resources, seamlessly integrating in-house procurement managers with external Professional Service Providers (PSPs).

• End-to-End Purchase & Category Operations: Own the end-to-end operational lifecycle from requisition to execution across multiple indirect categories simultaneously (including R&D, Digital & Tech, Facilities, and Corporate Services), moving beyond traditional transactional shared-service boundaries.

Digital Transformation & P2P Optimization

• Automation Roadmap: Partner with the Procurement Digital Solutions team to identify opportunities for automation. You will lead the rollout of "self-service" procurement tools to reduce manual intervention and cycle times.

• Systems Stewardship: Together with the respective Capability Leads serve as the business owner for Indirect Categories for P2P and Agentic AI technology adoption ensuring these tools are utilized to their full potential to drive data integrity and transparency.

• Digital & Process Transformation: Be a key partner to the Digital and Governance team to drive continuous process improvement, operational automation, and the integration of AI/digital procurement tools across global workflows to reduce cycle times and elevate user experience.

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Escalation Management: Act as the primary global escalation point for critical operational bottlenecks, system failures, or complex stakeholder requirements.

• Contract & Legal Oversight: Ensure that all operational procurement activities comply with legal standards. You will oversee the management of contract documentation and templates, mitigating risks associated with supplier engagements.

People Leadership & Talent Development

• Talent Allocation: Strategically deploy resources across the Indirect Procurement Operations and PSPs network to meet fluctuating business demands and project priorities.

• Coaching & Culture: Cultivate a high-performance culture focused on "Enterprise Thinking." You will be responsible for succession planning, mentoring senior leads, and fostering an environment of continuous learning and psychological safety.

• Stakeholder Influence: Act as a trusted advisor to senior business leaders, translating complex procurement metrics into actionable business insights.

Who you are

• Education: You hold a university degree, with a business or life science degree preferable.

• Experience: You have 15+ years procurement experience strategic and operational procurement experience, including relevant related category experience in Indirect Services, ideally in a matrix organization.

• Leadership and Communication: You have demonstrated success in building, cultivating and managing global large and senior teams. You have proven excellent leadership, communication, conflict resolution, and influencing skills.

• Broad Enterprise Focus: Proven track record of leading large-scale global procurement delivery, with experience extending beyond conventional local Global Capability Center (GCC) or transactional shared-service setups.

• Multi-Category Expertise: Demonstrated success in standardizing operations across multiple complex indirect spend categories in a matrixed global environment.

• International Market Exposure (Desirable): Prior direct work experience outside India, or an established track record of holding global operational mandates in overseas markets, is highly desirable.

• Digital & AI Capability: Strong mindset for innovation, with proven experience in driving digital transformation, Agentic AI/automation adoption, and lean process improvement frameworks.

• Operational Expertise: You have demonstrated experience in procurement end-to-end value chain. You have deep knowledge and experience in the relevant category value chain and strong knowledge of other categories.

• Mindset: You strive to act as an enterprise thinker and leverage knowledge and expertise to create solutions for business customers by proactively fostering collaboration, including across the procurement network. You are action oriented and can make decisions and influence others to do the same; you repurpose work and ideas in favor of starting from scratch.  You demonstrate curiosity, active listening and a willingness to experiment and test new ideas when appropriate, with the focus very much on continuous learning and improvement. You work with colleagues across procurement, business and the wider Roche organization to broaden knowledge and expertise, better understand customer needs, and connect the dots. You are open-minded and inclusive, generously sharing ideas and knowledge, while being receptive to ideas and feedback from others.

• Language Proficiency: You have fluency in English to Business level

Who we are

A healthier future drives us to innovate. Together, more than 100’000 employees across the globe are dedicated to advance science, ensuring everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Our efforts result in more than 26 million people treated with our medicines and over 30 billion tests conducted using our Diagnostics products. We empower each other to explore new possibilities, foster creativity, and keep our ambitions high, so we can deliver life-changing healthcare solutions that make a global impact.

Let’s build a healthier future, together.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.