Lead Specialist, HR Operations

Our team

We are the HR Product Owner team. We decide what gets built in Oracle and ServiceNow, in what order, and why. The HR community brings us their problems and their ideas, and we make sure they get into the system, get prioritised, and get tested before they reach anyone. Our colleagues never need to go to the technology teams directly. That is our job.

Each of us owns a domain end to end: onboarding and offboarding journeys, leave and absence, talent management, benefits and vendor management. This role adds the one domain we are missing.

About the role

As Program Manager and PO for Contingent Workforce, you will own the contingent worker journey as a product, from the moment someone is sourced, through onboarding, extensions and role changes, to the day they leave and their access is closed cleanly. Hire to retire, with one owner.

Today that journey runs across a vendor management system, Oracle Fusion, ServiceNow and our identity platforms, with different teams owning different pieces and nobody holding the whole thread. A working prototype already exists: a single conversational front door where a hiring manager gives the information once and the systems do the rest, with no tickets raised at all. Your job is to take that from a promising prototype to a permanent service, and to extend it across the full lifecycle.

This is not a role about keeping a system running. You will bring a process architect mindset to simplify genuine complexity, working with shared services, global HR systems and emerging technologies such as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence, so that the contingent worker experience becomes something we design rather than something that happens.

Key responsibilities

• Own the contingent worker journey end to end as a product, with a clear roadmap, prioritised increments and measurable outcomes.
• Act as business owner of our vendor management system (Beeline), covering configuration, supplier onboarding, rate card structures, worker classification and reporting.
• Manage the relationship with the vendor management system provider and with staffing suppliers, holding both to agreed service levels.
• Map the journey across Talent Acquisition, Procurement, Finance, IT, Security, and the country teams, then redesign it rather than simply document it.
• Identify where policy rather than technology is the real blocker, and build the case to change it.
• Maintain the role-based profile model so that access and equipment are provisioned automatically for standard roles, and manually only for genuine exceptions.
• Translate what you learn into what gets built in Oracle and ServiceNow, and see it through to testing and adoption.
• Work alongside the Global Process Owner for Hire-to-Onboard, and with the teams building provisioning for permanent employees, so we converge on one pattern rather than several.
• Bring security, compliance and audit in early, not at the point of go-live.
• Define and track what good looks like: time from source to day one, day one readiness, tickets raised per worker, and satisfaction of both the worker and the hiring manager.

What you bring

Five to eight years of experience in contingent workforce programmes, managed service provider models, or HR operations with direct contingent workforce responsibility.

Hands-on ownership of a vendor management system such as Beeline or SAP Fieldglass, including configuration, supplier management and reporting. Experience as an end user alone is not enough for this role.

A process architect mindset: you can map a cross-functional journey, find where the time and the friction actually sit, and simplify it.

Comfort with data. You build the measurement case yourself rather than waiting for a report.

Proven success working in a matrix environment, influencing across functions without direct authority.

Curiosity and openness to innovation, including robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and agent-based workflows.

Clear written communication. Much of this role is making a complex journey understandable to people who own only one part of it.

Working knowledge of Oracle Fusion, ServiceNow and identity platforms such as Microsoft Entra is an advantage.

Understanding of contingent worker classification and compliance requirements across multiple countries is an advantage.

Why join us?

You will own a journey that thousands of people at Pearson experience, and you will own it properly: the system, the process, the suppliers and the roadmap. Few roles at this level give you that much of a canvas.

You will also arrive at the right moment. The problem is already evidenced, a prototype already works, and there is executive attention on the outcome. What is missing is a single owner to turn it into something permanent and scale it.

As the world's leading learning company, Pearson is transforming how people learn, work and grow. You will be based in India and working globally, with hybrid and flexible working, and with a team of product owners around you who are solving the same kind of problem in their own domains.