Senior Director, Planning and Resourcing - UK or IRE

About the Role Senior Director, Planning & Resource Management leads the function that plans, forecasts and deploys clinical delivery talent across ICON's global portfolio. Reporting to the EVP, Business Operations, the role owns demand versus capacity for thousands of professionals across PM, CTM, CRA, CTA, Study Start-Up, Data Management, Biostatistics, Pharmacovigilance, Medical Affairs and other clinical delivery groups. The role emphasizes leadership, commercial judgement and data-driven decision-making to protect delivery quality and margin as the business scales. What You'll Do

• Portfolio resource strategy — owning demand forecasting and capacity planning across the global clinical delivery portfolio, translating pipeline, bookings and study stage into resource requirements for multiple clinical delivery groups.
• Challenging demand — constructively challenging business partners on resource demand, using data to distinguish genuine need from over- or under-calling, and defending decisions in commercial, margin and delivery-risk terms.
• Capacity & utilisation — optimising utilisation, bench and ramp-up/ramp-down across thousands of resources, balancing efficiency against delivery risk, quality and employee wellbeing.
• Leading the team — leading, developing and retaining an established resource management team, adding value without disrupting what already works well.
• Cross-functional partnership — partnering with Finance, Project Management, Clinical Operations, Talent Acquisition and Sales/Proposals to align resource supply with revenue forecasts, hiring plans and new business.
• Systems & governance — advancing the forecasting models, tools, metrics and governance that underpin resourcing decisions, and reporting capacity health and risk to senior leadership.
• Compliance & quality — ensuring resourcing practices comply with ICH-GCP, applicable regulations and internal quality standards.
• Strategic leadership — providing strategic guidance to support ICON's growth and operational excellence while managing resourcing risks and trade-offs. What We're Looking For
• Commercially credible resourcing leader who has run demand-versus-capacity planning at scale in a project-based, professional-services environment, and who is comfortable holding the line with senior business partners.
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline; advanced degree preferred.
• Resourcing at scale — proven experience leading a resource management, planning or deployment function that resourced thousands of specialist professionals across a portfolio of concurrent projects.
• Industry background — gained in a project-based, billable/utilisation-driven environment; CRO or clinical operations experience strongly preferred; alternatively experience from management consultancy or professional-services RMOs, IT services/SIs, engineering/infrastructure consultancies, or financial services transformation/PMO.
• Forecasting & capacity planning — demonstrated ability to build demand forecasts and capacity models against a project pipeline, and to manage utilisation, bench and ramp-up/ramp-down across a large, distributed workforce.
• Commercial influence — track record of challenging senior stakeholders on resource demand with data and commercial reasoning.
• People leadership — experience leading and retaining high-performing teams, including inheriting capable teams and elevating them without disruption.
• Regulated environment — understanding operating in a regulated, quality-driven environment; familiarity with ICH-GCP and clinical delivery roles is an advantage and the ability to learn the domain quickly.
• Stakeholder skills — excellent communication, organisational and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build relationships with stakeholders at all levels, up to executive leadership. Nice to Have
• Clinical research experience is advantageous; however, leaders with proven resourcing discipline in adjacent sectors (management consulting RMOs, IT services/SIs, engineering/infrastructure consultancies, financial services transformation/PMO) are welcome.
• Experience applying resource management discipline to a large, specialist global workforce. Compensation & Benefits
• ICON offers a competitive salary and a range of benefits designed to support well-being and work-life balance; benefits vary by country.