Senior Principal Strategist, Strategy & Planning

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Job Details

Job Profile Summary

Leads the operating engine of Cencora’s global Enterprise Infrastructure & Cloud (EIC) organization and drives its transformation to a product operating model enabled by AI Ops. Owns how EIC plans, funds, staffs, and delivers through a product lens: a ~850-person global workforce plan aligned to product teams, a ~$150M operating and capital plan tied to product funding, and an EIC delivery portfolio driven by product roadmaps. Leads the transition of every EIC domain from project- and ticket-based delivery to the product model, defining the product taxonomy, product owner accountabilities, and operating cadence, and advancing adoption from the current 60%+ baseline to full coverage. Serves as principal advisor and force multiplier to the SVP of EIC and as the connective tissue between EIC and the Office of the CDIO, Cyber Security, Finance, HR, Procurement, and Legal. Success is measured by whether EIC operates as a product organization that delivers on commitment, on budget, with the right people in the right seats, and whether the enterprise’s technology spend, supplier base, and investment portfolio are demonstrably better governed as a result.

Job Description

• Product Transformation: Leads the transition of the ~850-person EIC organization from a project- and ticket-based model to a product operating model spanning Network & Access, Digital Workplace, Cloud Platform Engineering, Private Hosting, IT Operations & ITSM, MA&D, and Architecture, advancing coverage from the current 60%+ baseline to full adoption in alignment with the GDATS maturity model.
• Defines and maintains the EIC product taxonomy, including product boundaries, product owner accountabilities, funding model, and operating cadence, and extends it to products jointly owned with Information Security and application organizations; partners with domain leaders to redesign roles, rituals, and decision rights.
• Talent Strategy & Position Management: Owns the EIC global workforce plan of ~520 employees and ~325 contractors, including the position roster, approved headcount envelope, insource/outsource mix aligned to the defined Talent Strategy.
• Governs requisition approval, backfills, contractor-to-employee conversion, organizational design, and span-of-control discipline with HR and Finance; maintains a rolling view of skills supply and demand as the organization shifts from infrastructure operations to platform and software engineering; leads succession planning and talent review preparation for the EIC leadership team.
• Project & Portfolio Management: Owns the EIC delivery portfolio end to end, including intake, prioritization, resourcing, dependency management, milestone tracking, and executive reporting, and runs the governance forums where portfolio trade-offs are made.
• Represents EIC in the enterprise technology investment prioritization process, where an ~$80M+ annual funding envelope is allocated against ~$135M+ of demand from six technology organizations; builds and maintains the EIC delivery dashboard, sustaining 90%+ of work visible in Jira or ServiceNow.
• Financial Management: Owns the ~$166M EIC operating and capital plan, including annual budget build, monthly forecast, variance analysis, accrual discipline, and year-end landing, and ensures EIC financial controls withstand SOX audit and internal control review.
• Delivers committed savings targets and builds the business cases and investment narratives that secure funding for EIC's strategic agenda, translating infrastructure and cloud economics into unit cost, cost-to-serve, and run/grow/transform terms the business understands.
• Enterprise Hardware & Software Program: Runs the enterprise hardware and software spend reduction program on behalf of the company: ~$400M of annual addressable spend, a 5–10% reduction target over 24 months, seven workstreams, and cross-functional leads from Enterprise Architecture, Finance/FP&A, Procurement, Software Asset Management, IT Finance, and Information Security.
• Owns the EIC renewal portfolio of ~$320M across ~835 agreements and ~273 publishers and OEMs through a rolling 18-month renewal calendar; enforces the PADU disposition framework with Enterprise Architecture and reports savings on a Finance-validated basis only.
• Sourcing & Vendor Management: Establishes and runs the EIC vendor performance management framework, including scorecards, QBRs, service-level accountability, and escalation paths, in partnership with Procurement, and drives supplier consolidation and standardization where it improves economics or outcomes.
• Office of EIC: Runs the EIC leadership operating rhythm, including staff meetings, offsites, all-hands, OKRs, and the annual planning calendar; prepares the SVP for executive and enterprise forums; owns EIC internal and executive communications; and coordinates audit, compliance, and regulatory responses on behalf of EIC.

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Additional Job Description

• 15+ years of progressive experience in technology, with meaningful time and deep functional expertise in infrastructure, cloud, or IT operations, required; must be credible with engineers as well as executives.
• Demonstrated ownership of a technology operating budget of $150M or greater, including capital planning and multi-year forecasting, required.
• Demonstrated ownership of a technology supplier portfolio of $250M or greater in annual spend, including enterprise agreements with hyperscalers or top-tier software publishers, required.
• Experience managing a global workforce plan of 500+ employees plus a comparable contingent workforce across multiple countries and delivery models required.
• Direct experience leading enterprise AI or automation adoption, including tooling selection, value measurement, and governance, preferred
• Track record leading enterprise-scale transformation (product operating model, cloud migration, or comparable).
• Experience operating in a regulated environment, with familiarity with SOX, HIPPA and with GxP, DSCSA, or an equivalent regulatory framework, required.
• Experience in healthcare, pharmaceutical distribution, life sciences, or another highly regulated industry preferred; prior chief of staff, business operations, or strategy and planning leadership within a technology function preferred.

First-Year Success Measures

• A published, adopted EIC product taxonomy, with the share of EIC operating under the product model measurably advanced from its 60%+ baseline.
• A single, trusted source of truth for the workforce plan, program portfolio, and financial forecast that leadership uses without reconciliation.
• The ~$150M EIC budget landed within tolerance, with the ~$20M hardware and software savings commitment delivered and Finance-validated.
• Vendor scorecards in place for all suppliers above $1M, a rolling 18-month renewal calendar with no unmanaged auto-renewals, and at least one top-10 agreement renegotiated to improved terms.
• Recognition from Finance, Procurement, HR, Enterprise Architecture, and Information Security that the programs this role owns are better governed, and an EIC leadership team reporting fewer surprises, faster decisions, and better-prepared executive engagement

What Cencora offers

We provide compensation, benefits, and resources that enable a highly inclusive culture and support our team members’ ability to live with purpose every day. In addition to traditional offerings like medical, dental, and vision care, we also provide a comprehensive suite of benefits that focus on the physical, emotional, financial, and social aspects of wellness. This encompasses support for working families, which may include backup dependent care, adoption assistance, infertility coverage, family building support, behavioral health solutions, paid parental leave, and paid caregiver leave. To encourage your personal growth, we also offer a variety of training programs, professional development resources, and opportunities to participate in mentorship programs, employee resource groups, volunteer activities, and much more. For details, visit

Equal Employment Opportunity

Cencora is committed to providing equal employment opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or membership in any other class protected by federal, state or local law.

The company’s continued success depends on the full and effective utilization of qualified individuals. Therefore, harassment is prohibited and all matters related to recruiting, training, compensation, benefits, promotions and transfers comply with equal opportunity principles and are non-discriminatory.

Cencora is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities during the employment process which are consistent with legal requirements. If you wish to request an accommodation while seeking employment, please call View phone number on aiapply.co or email View email address on aiapply.co. We will make accommodation determinations on a request-by-request basis. Messages and emails regarding anything other than accommodations requests will not be returned

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