Delivery Lead, Engineering & Technology, CP R&D IT

Syngenta Crop Protection is a leader in agricultural innovation, bringing breakthrough technologies and solutions that enable farmers to grow productively and sustainably.

We offer a leading portfolio of crop protection solutions for plant and soil health, as well as digital solutions that transform the decision-making capabilities of farmers.

Our 17,900 employees serve to advance agriculture in more than 90 countries around the world.

Syngenta Crop Protection is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and is part of the Syngenta Group.

Our employees reflect the diversity of our customers, the markets where we operate and the communities which we serve.

No matter what your position, you will have a vital role in safely feeding the world and taking care of our planet.

Join us and help shape the future of agriculture.

We are looking for a Delivery Lead to drive reliable, transparent, and continuously improving delivery across Engineering and Technology.

Based in Platform Engineering, this role owns the cross-stream dependency and commitment management that keeps Platform Engineering, AI Enablement, and Product Engineering aligned in day-to-day execution.

Platform Engineering provides shared foundations to reduce duplicated effort, remove friction, promote reuse, and establish consistent engineering standards — enabling teams to build, ship, and operate digital products faster, more consistently, and with greater confidence.

This directly accelerates the delivery of software solutions to our scientists and, ultimately, active ingredient discovery across small molecules and biologicals.

This role is accountable for delivery orchestration across the team, ensuring prioritised work is delivered incrementally, with transparent execution, actively managed risks and dependencies, and clear alignment to successful business outcomes.

• Own the delivery rhythm across Platform Engineering and ensure ceremonies drive outcomes, not compliance. Prioritise early, incremental value delivery
• Surface and manage cross-squad dependencies inside Platform Engineering and between Platform Engineering and its primary consumers.
• Own day-to-day delivery coordination with vendor leads and delivery commitments (statements of work) in Platform Engineering scope.
• Coordinate onboarding and offboarding of vetted externals with the relevant Staff Engineers and surface performance or capacity issues early.
• Chair the Delivery Council, own the cross-stream dependency register, and drive follow-through across Platform Engineering, AI Enablement, and Product Engineering.
• Call cross-stream re-plans when commitments slip and escalate only when consensus cannot be reached.
• Establish and maintain effective delivery metrics and reporting to ensure progress transparency and support data-driven action
• Publish authoritative delivery dashboards covering delivery health, dependency status, and agreed organisational metrics.
• Drive recurring delivery forums and preparation for the wider Engineering and Technology operating cadence.
• Proactively identify, assess, and manage delivery risks and issues, implementing mitigation strategies and communicating impact to stakeholders.
• Facilitate capacity planning and resource allocation discussions to ensure realistic commitments and optimal utilisation of team capabilities.
• Champion continuous improvement initiatives within delivery processes, gathering feedback from teams and implementing enhancements to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• Maintain comprehensive delivery documentation and knowledge repositories to ensure transparency, traceability, and institutional learning across the organisation.

• Business Impact: Key role coordinating platform engineering teams with budget up to $5M/year
• People: Managing IT teams internal or external third-party, no direct FTE reports

• Complexity: High stakeholder management, matrix design, and cross-functional leadership requirements

Experience / Previous roles required for the role

• Proven track record of coordinating multi-squad engineering delivery in enterprise environments with real dependency depth and organisational visibility
• Understands CI/CD, cloud, IAM, observability, API infrastructure, and HPC well enough to challenge delivery assumptions credibly
• Can distinguish technical risk, resourcing risk, and process risk, and escalate the right issue at the right time
• Adapts Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid approaches to platform engineering; comfortable coordinating vendor delivery without letting external structures distort internal priorities
• Influencing without authority—operating as an individual contributor whose mandate comes from role design, credibility, and explicit leadership backing
• Exceptional written communication, producing clear dashboards, dependency registers, status reports, and re-plan proposals
• Turns retrospective outcomes into real operating changes with tracked follow-through
• Fluency in English, both written and verbal
• Experience delivering technology capabilities in scientific, R&D, data-intensive, or complex enterprise environments

Nice to have

• Background in software engineering, computer science, or agile frameworks (SAFe/Release Train Engineer experience)
• Experience working in life sciences, crop protection R&D, or similar environments that promote diverse thinking and experimentation

Experiences to be gained in the role

• Exposure to business strategy as an entry into more strategic leadership roles
• Deep understanding of Crop Protection R&D and digital science
• Build authentic, trust-based working relationships with sponsors, experts, and managers

Why Syngenta?

• Meaningful impact: help build technology that supports scientific innovation and sustainable agriculture.
• Complex, modern challenges: work on high-scale platforms and systems with room for technical judgement.
• Collaborative environment: partner with global engineering, R&D and product communities.
• Growth: broaden your influence through challenging work, visible outcomes and a global network.