Lead, Technology Solutions

Job Title: Lead, Technology Solutions

About the Role

We are looking for a Director of Productivity & Collaboration to lead the strategy, delivery, and continuous improvement of the tools, platforms, and services that enable our workforce to communicate, collaborate, and work productively. This leader will own the end-to-end lifecycle of our productivity and collaboration ecosystem — from technical architecture and vendor contracts to team leadership and stakeholder engagement — ensuring the organization has secure, modern, and cost-effective tools that scale with the business.

This is a highly cross-functional role that blends deep technical expertise with people leadership, financial stewardship, and relationship management. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable in a vendor negotiation, a budget review, an architecture design session, and a leadership team meeting.

Key Responsibilities

As a direct report to the Vice President of Digital Workplace Services within Digital and Technology, the candidate will be responsible for:

Technical Strategy & Depth

• Own the strategy, architecture, and roadmap for the productivity and collaboration stack inclusive of voice, video, meeting platforms and technologies (e.g., Microsoft 365 inclusive of Copilot / Google Workspace, Teams / SharePoint, Zoom, Smartsheet, Copilot Studio/Power Platform, Adobe Creative Cloud/ Sign, Email and SMTP Gateways).
• Maintain deep technical fluency across the breadth of the collaboration ecosystem — messaging, voice, video/meeting platforms, file storage/sharing, intranet/portal technologies, workflow/automation, and AI-enabled productivity tools.
• Evaluate emerging technologies (including AI-powered productivity tools) and lead proof-of-concepts, pilots, and enterprise rollouts.
• Partner with security, infrastructure, and architecture teams to ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for security, compliance, scalability, and reliability.
• Define and monitor technical standards, integration patterns, and governance frameworks across the collaboration portfolio.
• Coordinating team supporting M&A and divestment activities. This support includes initial impact assessments, planning through to diligence and implementation of the technical integration aspects of the merger as they relate Productivity and Collaboration.

Leadership

• Manage a globally distributed team of engineers and service managers responsible for collaboration platforms and end-user productivity services, providing leadership, mentoring, and direction to build a high-performing function.
• Set team vision, priorities, and OKRs; foster a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Develop team capability through coaching, career planning, and performance management, while setting current and long-term objectives for the team.
• Act as a change leader, driving adoption of new tools and ways of working across the organization.
• Represent the function in leadership forums, contributing to broader IT and business strategy.
• Support the VP, Digital Workplace Services in building and maintaining strong relationships with key business owners, ensuring the department understands business requirements, future demand, and the impact on platform design and operations.
• Leads by example and encourages the team to maintain excellent visibility of industry wide trends and emerging technologies/vendors and ensures that the team understands and proposes developments to the benefit of Pearson

Financial & Budget Management

• Own the annual budget for the productivity and collaboration portfolio, including licensing, infrastructure, and professional services costs.
• Drive cost optimization through license reclamation, usage analysis, and tiering/right-sizing of subscriptions.
• Build business cases and ROI models for new investments, presenting to senior leadership and finance stakeholders.
• Forecast multi-year spend and manage cost variance reporting.

Contract & Vendor Management

• Lead negotiations, renewals, and lifecycle management of contracts with major vendors (e.g., Microsoft, Google, Zoom, Smartsheet, Adobe, etc.).
• Manage vendor relationships and performance against SLAs, driving accountability and value realization.
• Partner with Procurement and Legal to structure agreements that balance cost, risk, and flexibility.
• Reduce unit costs through effective ongoing vendor management. This includes understanding and presenting of alternative technology/vendor options

Stakeholder Management

• Serve as the primary point of contact for business units on productivity and collaboration needs, translating business requirements into technical solutions.
• Build strong relationships with executive sponsors, business unit leaders, HR, Legal, Security, and Finance.
• Communicate roadmap, incidents, and major changes clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Gather and act on user feedback to continuously improve the employee digital experience.

Desirable skills, qualifications and experience:

• 5+ years of progressive IT experience in collaboration, digital workplace, or end-user technology roles, including Director-level responsibility in a workplace services position or leadership of a similarly scaled engineering function.
• 3+ years in a people leadership role managing technical teams.
• Demonstrated deep and broad technical expertise across collaboration platforms (e.g., Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Zoom, SharePoint, automation/workflow tools).
• Proven experience owning budgets, forecasting, and financial reporting for a technology portfolio.
• Track record of leading vendor negotiations and contract management for enterprise software agreements.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with experience presenting to and influencing senior executives.
• Excellent communication, prioritization, organizational and influencing skills.
• Experience in leading geographically dispersed teams
• Experience with AI-enabled productivity tools and driving enterprise adoption of new technologies.
• Relevant certifications e.g., Microsoft 365 Certified, PMP, ITIL, Project Management
• Experience of leading technical input to significant ($15M+) technology procurements
• Establishing and cultivating matrixed working relationship with all internal colleagues
• Demonstrable experience of driving unit cost reduction whilst maintaining platform performance and availability

What Success Looks Like

• A stable, secure, and modern collaboration environment with high employee satisfaction and adoption.
• Optimized technology spend with clear ROI and no unnecessary licensing waste.
• Strong, well-managed vendor relationships with favourable contract terms.
• A motivated, capable team with clear growth paths.
• Trusted partnerships across the business, with productivity and collaboration seen as an enabler of strategic goals.