Sr Manager, PLM Operations

Overview

Lead Illumina's Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategy and operations in India, advancing the PLM capability roadmap, strengthening enterprise change governance, and enabling scalable product lifecycle execution across business functions.

What you'll do

• Own and evolve the PLM strategy and multi-year roadmap for the India organization, aligned with enterprise objectives, product lifecycle priorities, operational needs, and digital transformation goals.
• Lead both PLM strategy and operations teams, including a small senior strategy team and a larger operations organization, building capability, accountability, and execution discipline.
• Define future-state PLM capabilities, operating models, governance mechanisms, and process improvement priorities that enable scalable, compliant, and efficient product lifecycle management.
• Partner with cross-functional leaders across R&D, Supply Chain, Quality, Manufacturing, IT, MDM, Solution Architecture, and Data Architecture to align business intent, change impact, data readiness, implementation priorities, and adoption outcomes.
• Lead complex problem solving across ambiguous business, process, data, and technology challenges requiring enterprise thinking, prioritization, stakeholder alignment, and structured decision-making.
• Drive transformation initiatives that simplify change management, improve data quality, strengthen configuration governance, reduce process friction, and increase business value from PLM platforms and related enterprise systems.
• Establish portfolio and governance frameworks to prioritize PLM initiatives, manage risk, sequence investments, and link roadmap priorities to measurable outcomes and enterprise value realization.
• Influence senior stakeholders and cross-functional partners through strategic recommendations, business cases, trade-off analysis, and clear communication of risks, dependencies, and decision points.
• Champion responsible adoption of digital capabilities, automation, analytics, AI/LLM opportunities, and process mining to improve PLM effectiveness, operational productivity, user experience, and decision support.
• Ensure day-to-day PLM operations remain effective, compliant, and service-oriented while progressively shifting the organization from transactional execution to strategic capability ownership.
• Develop talent, mentoring senior professionals and people leaders, strengthening succession depth, and building a high-performing organization.
• Represent the PLM function in enterprise forums, audits, transformation reviews, and leadership discussions, positioning it as a strategic business partner.

What you'll need

• Demonstrated ability to define strategy, build roadmaps, solve complex enterprise problems, and translate business priorities into actionable transformation plans.
• Strong understanding of PLM processes, change management, item and BoM lifecycle, configuration management, data governance, and cross-functional product lifecycle execution.
• Experience leading managers, senior professionals, and large operational teams while also guiding strategy, transformation, and capability-building initiatives.
• Proven ability to influence senior leaders and cross-functional stakeholders in complex, matrixed environments without relying solely on positional authority.
• Experience developing governance models, business cases, KPI frameworks, value realization measures, and operating rhythms that connect strategy to execution.
• Ability to balance near-term operational performance with longer-term capability building, organizational maturity, and future-state design.
• Typically a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Life Sciences, Information Systems, Business, Operations, or a related discipline.
• Minimum of 12 years of progressive experience in PLM, operations leadership, enterprise transformation, product lifecycle management, business process architecture, MDM, digital strategy, or related functional environments.

Nice to have

• Working knowledge of PLM platforms, ERP interactions, MDM concepts, solution architecture, data architecture, automation, analytics, and emerging digital capabilities.

Details

• Location: India, Bengaluru (Manyata).
• Not eligible for visa sponsorship.