Deputy General Manager - Solution Engineering - Global Service Centre

About the Role

Head of Solutions Engineering Shared Services Centre (SSC) is a senior leadership role responsible for establishing, leading, and scaling a Solutions Engineering SSC that supports Contract Logistics. The role provides strategic and operational leadership across SSC delivery, initial team formation, capability development, and transformation, ensuring high‑quality, consistent, and increasingly industrialised engineering support across RFQ, solution development, and enablement activities. Hands‑on experience in launching and embedding service‑centre initiatives within a complex, matrixed 3PL environment is required. Key leadership responsibilities include providing strategic leadership for the SSC operating model, leading the identification, hiring, and onboarding of the initial core team with the right blend of technical depth, leadership potential, and cultural fit, and shaping the SSC into a cohesive, high‑performing global team. The role owns and governs the SSC delivery framework—demand intake, prioritisation, capacity management, and service‑level performance—and acts as a senior partner to regional Solutions Engineering, Commercial, Operations, IT, and Transformation teams, positioning the SSC as a value‑creating capability rather than a transactional support function. Senior‑level oversight of complex or high‑risk solutioning activities is also required to ensure quality, commercial soundness, and operational feasibility. Strategic and operational accountability involves serving as the primary interface between the SSC and regional/global Solutions Engineering leadership, initially focusing on the EU with a clear roadmap for global expansion. The role translates the ambition of a global Solutions Engineering capability into a phased build‑and‑scale plan, anticipating and managing common challenges such as role clarity, stakeholder adoption, capability ramp‑up, knowledge transfer, and perception of value. SSC strategies must align with regional and global solutioning priorities, commercial expectations, operational capabilities, and the longer‑term AI and automation agenda. Governance, metrics, and dashboards are established to demonstrate value creation, productivity uplift, and business impact, while acting as the senior escalation point for delivery, capability, or adoption issues. People leadership and capability building focus on constructing the SSC leadership and engineering team from the ground up, defining clear roles, accountability, and development pathways, and developing the SSC into a globally recognised centre of capability. The role embeds a strong ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement culture, partners with HR on succession planning, capability uplift, and long‑term talent strategy, and leads change‑management initiatives associated with SSC launch, scaling, and evolution into new operating models. • Set and drive the SSC operating model to deliver scalable, repeatable engineering support for RFQs and solution development. • Identify, hire, and onboard the initial SSC core team, ensuring technical depth, leadership potential, and cultural fit. • Govern the SSC delivery framework including demand intake, prioritisation, capacity management, and service‑level performance. • Partner with regional Solutions Engineering, Commercial, Operations, IT, and Transformation leaders to position the SSC as a value‑creating capability. • Provide senior oversight of complex or high‑risk solutioning activities, ensuring quality, commercial soundness, and operational feasibility. • Act as the primary liaison between the SSC and global Solutions Engineering leadership, mapping a phased build‑and‑scale roadmap. • Anticipate and resolve common SSC launch challenges such as role clarity, stakeholder adoption, capability ramp‑up, and knowledge transfer. • Align SSC strategies with regional/global solution priorities, commercial growth plans, operational constraints, and AI/automation initiatives. • Establish governance, metrics, and dashboards to demonstrate SSC value creation and productivity uplift. • Build a globally recognised SSC leadership and engineering team with clear roles, accountability, and development pathways. • Collaborate with HR on succession planning, capability uplift, and long‑term talent strategy. • Lead change‑management initiatives for SSC launch, scaling, and transition to new operating models. • Champion safety leadership, ethical conduct, and a zero‑harm mindset across the SSC. • Deliver measurable improvements in speed, consistency, and quality of engineering outputs and advance AI‑enabled solution development.

Key Responsibilities

• ▸operating model
• ▸demand management
• ▸capacity planning
• ▸metrics dashboard
• ▸ai integration
• ▸team build

What You Bring

Qualifications include a degree in Engineering, Supply Chain, Industrial Engineering, or a related discipline, and 15+ years of progressive leadership experience with direct responsibility for launching and scaling Shared Services Centres, Global Business Services, or equivalent global support functions. Candidates must have demonstrable experience building teams from inception, strong exposure to engineering or solutions‑based environments within logistics or related sectors, and preferably first‑hand experience in a global 3PL or similarly complex, fast‑scaling organisation. Strong commercial and operational acumen, with the ability to balance speed, quality, cost, and risk, is essential. Success indicators for Band 4 include successful hiring and stabilisation of the SSC core team, effective operation as a cohesive global Solutions Engineering capability, improved speed, consistency, and quality of engineering outputs, and clear progress toward industrialised, reusable, and AI‑enabled solution development. Additional measures are a strong leadership bench, positive senior stakeholder feedback, and visible safety leadership with a zero‑harm mindset, ethical conduct, and professional standards.

Requirements

• ▸engineering degree
• ▸15+ years
• ▸global 3pl
• ▸commercial acumen
• ▸ai‑enabled
• ▸safety leadership

Work Environment

Hybrid