Associate Director - Service Desk Operations

At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve. This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.

Organization Overview

Our technology organization operates a global IT operations function spanning end-user support and application production support. The function resolves employee and customer requests across voice, chat, and self-service channels, and keeps critical enterprise applications stable and available through structured incident and problem management. We are modernizing this operating model through automation, analytics, and agentic capabilities — progressively shifting resolution closer to the user and toward self-healing, while reducing avoidable demand across both service and application streams.

Key Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day service desk operations across multiple shifts — leading hands-on where required through shift leadership, quality assurance, and end-to-end delivery accountability — ensuring consistent achievement of key service measures (first-contact resolution, customer satisfaction, average handle time, and resolution quality).

• Own operational readiness for new capabilities — tooling and access, infrastructure and workspace setup, workforce scheduling, and transition into steady-state operations against committed timelines.

• Design and run tiered support models that progressively shift resolution toward self-service and automation, with clear ownership boundaries between tiers and governance to sustain them over time.

• Strengthen incident and problem management across both service and application streams, moving teams from reactive firefighting toward structured, permanent resolution of repeat escalations.

• Establish an insight routine on top demand drivers — across contacts and application incidents alike — and convert it into targeted actions: customized training, prioritized automation and agentic use-cases, and self-service or self-healing deflection.

• Drive adoption of enabling technologies and act as an informed sponsor for AI-assisted tools, endpoint analytics, chat deflection, and agentic workflows — bridging IT implementation and operational uptake while governing deployment quality.

• Run the operating cadence, performance management, and success-measure reporting as a single point of accountability, ensuring clear stakeholder visibility and timely escalation.

• Manage stakeholders across senior leadership, peer function heads, and delivery teams — driving alignment and outcomes without relying on positional authority.

Basic Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in IT operations — including hands-on delivery leadership of a front-line (L1) service desk / contact center and management of L2/L3 application production support.

• Hands-on or supervisory experience in technical support — incident triage, root cause analysis, and resolution across enterprise applications on on-premise and cloud infrastructure — with technical grounding in at least one scripting or programming language (Python, Java, PowerShell, or equivalent) and familiarity with APIs, integration patterns, and IT infrastructure fundamentals.

• Strong grounding in incident and problem management within an ITIL-aligned environment — able to move a team from reactive firefighting toward structured, permanent resolution over repeat escalations.

• Working understanding of SRE principles (SLOs/SLIs, observability, toil reduction) and how they apply to application stability and operational efficiency.

• Working knowledge of ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow — including ticket taxonomy, workflow design, reporting configuration, and connecting platform data to operational decisions.

• Demonstrated ownership of a support function through change — restructuring support tiers, introducing automation and self-service, and improving measurable service outcomes.

• Proven people leadership experience — building, scheduling, and developing shift-based teams, with the ability to lead hands-on in early phases before scaling.

• Ability to drive adoption of enabling technologies and act as an informed sponsor for AI-assisted tools, endpoint analytics, chat deflection, and agentic workflows — bridging IT implementation and operational uptake while governing deployment quality.

Additional Skills / Preferences

• ITIL certification; practical understanding of AI tools (Copilot, Claude, etc.) and applying them effectively in daily operations preferred.

• Experience running production support for business-critical applications, including environment monitoring, patch/release support, and driving stability improvements over time — preferred.

• Exposure to contact center platforms (e.g., Genesys, Kore.ai, Amzon connect, etc) and endpoint or digital-experience analytics, with an understanding of conversational-AI, virtual-agent, and AI chatbot tooling etc

• Experience running self-service, chat-deflection, and automation/agentic capabilities at scale, backed by observability that keeps them reliable and effective.

• Ability to operate in a fast-paced, evolving environment and to lead through ambiguity, with strong executive communication and cross-functional influence.

Additional Information

• Location: Hyderabad.

• The role supports a 24x7 operations environment and requires flexibility to work across shifts, including night/later shift windows, particularly during early operational phases and ramp-up.

• This is a hands-on leadership role in its early phase, transitioning toward a broader leadership and oversight remit as the function matures.

Lilly is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities to actively engage in the workforce, ensuring equal opportunities when vying for positions. If you require accommodation to submit a resume for a position at Lilly, please complete the accommodation request form (https://careers.lilly.com/us/en/workplace-accommodation) for further assistance. Please note this is for individuals to request an accommodation as part of the application process and any other correspondence will not receive a response.

Lilly does not discriminate on the basis of age, race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, disability or any other legally protected status.

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