CHEP

Technology Platforms Strategy & Innovation Director

CHEP  •  United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Hybrid)  •  3 hours ago
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Job Description

CHEP helps move more goods to more people, in more places than any other organization on earth via our 347 million pallets, crates and containers. We employ approximately 13,000 people and operate in 60 countries. Through our pioneering and sustainable share-and-reuse business model, the world’s biggest brands trust us to help them transport their goods more efficiently, safely and with less environmental impact.

What does that mean for you? You’ll join an international organization big enough to take you anywhere, and small enough to get you there sooner. You’ll help change how goods get to market and contribute to global sustainability. You’ll be empowered to bring your authentic self to work and be surrounded by diverse and driven professionals. And you can maximize your work-life balance and flexibility through our Hybrid Work Model

Key Responsibilities May Include:

  • Lead the development of forward-looking platform strategies by integrating industry trends, emerging technologies, and business priorities into a coherent direction.
  • Provide independent architectural oversight across end user, edge, cloud, and network platforms to ensure consistency, scalability, and resilience.
  • Partner with digital, cyber, and operational teams to shape technology solutions early in the lifecycle, improving design quality and reducing downstream risk.
  • Translate complex technical concepts into clear, commercially relevant narratives that support executive understanding and informed decision-making.
  • Build and maintain strategic relationships with vendors, partners, and industry networks to bring external innovation and insights into the organisation.
  • Influence cross-platform alignment by ensuring initiatives are coherent, interoperable, and aligned to enterprise priorities.
  • Produce high-quality strategic artefacts, including technology strategies, options analyses, and investment cases, to support leadership forums.
  • Enable stronger risk awareness and mitigation by applying architectural judgement and challenge across technology and resilience initiatives.

The Technology Strategy & Innovation Lead is a senior leadership role within the Technology Platforms organisation, created to add critical technologist capacity, strategic depth, and architectural oversight to the leadership team.

This role does not own platform delivery. Instead, it provides senior technical leadership, early-stage engagement, and strategic orchestration across Technology Platforms, Cyber, Digital, and Supply Chain—working earlier in the lifecycle to shape direction, influence design, and improve outcomes.

The role exists to ensure Technology Platforms has:

  • A stronger seat at the enterprise table
  • Earlier, higher-quality engagement in Digital and Supply Chain-led initiatives
  • Clear, credible technology narratives communicated in the right language for executive and business audiences
  • Strong awareness of industry trends, emerging technologies, and vendor innovation
  • Senior architectural oversight across EUC, Edge, Cloud, and Network
  • Architectural oversight of risks and mitigation from a technology platforms perspective
  • Senior input into discussions relating to resilience engineering and business continuity planning

Role Specific Accountabilities:

Strategic Technology Leadership

  • Act as a senior technologist and strategic partner within the Technology Platforms Leadership Team, complementing platform owners by focusing on direction, coherence, and future-readiness.
  • Provide enterprise-level architectural and technology oversight across End User, Edge, Cloud, and Network platforms (distinct from formal Enterprise Architecture).
  • Bridge the gap between “what’s possible” and “what’s operationally sustainable”, ensuring ambition is grounded in operational reality.

Early Engagement & Business Partnership

  • Embed closely with Digital teams, engaging early in ideation, shaping, and solution design—working alongside senior Digital leaders (e.g. early engagement with roles such as Sandesh).
  • Partner deeply with Cyber and Supply Chain to align platform strategies with security, resilience, operational continuity, and business transformation priorities.
  • Improve technology outcomes by influencing decisions earlier in the lifecycle, reducing downstream rework and risk.

Innovation & Industry Awareness

  • Maintain strong awareness of industry direction, emerging technologies, vendor roadmaps, and architectural patterns relevant to global platform organisations.
  • Build and sustain senior relationships with strategic vendors, partners, and industry peers, including CTO-level engagement.
  • Translate external innovation into practical, consumable insights that inform platform strategy and enterprise decision-making.

Executive Communication & Influence

  • Act as a trusted technology voice in executive and senior business forums—able to articulate complex technology topics in clear, outcome-focused commercial language.
  • Produce high-quality executive artefacts (strategy packs, options papers, and decision decks), often at short notice, to support leadership discussions and investment decisions.
  • Strengthen Technology Platforms’ credibility by consistently presenting well-structured, evidence-based, business-aligned narratives

Cross-Platform Coherence & Risk

  • Provide independent, cross-platform perspective to ensure coherence, consistency, and alignment across EUC, Edge, Cloud, and Network initiatives.
  • Support Cyber initiatives through senior technical challenge, architectural guidance, and risk-based thinking
  • Help platform owners focus on delivery excellence by holding the broader strategic and architectural context

Key Relationships

  • Technology Platforms Leadership Team – peer contributor and strategic adviser
  • Digital Leadership & Product Teams – early-stage design and shaping partner
  • Cyber Leadership – technical oversight and alignment
  • Supply Chain Technology & Operations – resilience, operability, and scalability alignment
  • Strategic Vendors & Partners – innovation, roadmap influence, and insight generation

Experience:

Essential:

  • Significant previous experience in within a broad IT infrastructure leadership role.
  • Significant experience managing or influencing technical staff and projects.
  • Proven success in improving the customer experience.
  • Experience working within a matrix structure in global organisations.
  • Senior technologist with deep experience across modern enterprise platforms (EUC, Cloud, Network, Edge).
  • Proven ability to operate credibly at senior executive and board-facing levels.
  • Strong architectural thinking without reliance on formal EA constructs.
  • Demonstrated experience influencing outcomes without direct line authority.
  • Exceptional ability to translate technical complexity into business-relevant language.
  • Comfortable operating at pace, including turning around executive-quality materials quickly

Desirable:

  • Experience working closely with Digital / Product organisations in large enterprises.
  • Exposure to global, asset-intensive or supply-chain-driven environments.
  • Strong external network across vendors, partners, and industry forums.

Remote Type

Hybrid Remote

Skills to succeed in the role

Coaching, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Disruptive Thinking, Emerging Technologies, Emotional Intelligence, Enterprise Architecture (EA), Enterprise Technologies, Inclusive Leadership, Leading Change, Platform Strategy, Prioritization, Strategic Thinking, Technology Platforms, Technology Strategies, Technology Trends

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, and we are committed to developing a diverse workforce in which everyone is treated fairly, with respect, and has the opportunity to contribute to business success while realizing his or her potential. This means harnessing the unique skills and experience that each individual brings and we do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state, or local protected class.

Individuals fraudulently misrepresenting themselves as Brambles or CHEP representatives have scheduled interviews and offered fraudulent employment opportunities with the intent to commit identity theft or solicit money. Brambles and CHEP never conduct interviews via online chat or request money as a term of employment. If you have a question as to the legitimacy of an interview or job offer, please contact us at recruitment@brambles.com.

CHEP

About CHEP

CHEP helps move more goods to more people, in more places than any other organisation on earth. Its pallets, crates and containers form the invisible backbone of the global supply chain and the world’s biggest brands trust CHEP to help them transport their goods more efficiently, sustainably and safely.

As pioneers of the sharing economy, CHEP created one of the world's most sustainable logistics businesses through the share and reuse of its platforms under a model known as ‘pooling’. CHEP primarily serves the fast-moving consumer goods (e.g. dry food, grocery, and health and personal care), fresh produce, beverage, retail and general manufacturing industries.

CHEP employs approximately 13,000 people and believes in the power of collective intelligence through diversity, inclusion and teamwork. CHEP owns approximately 347 million pallets, crates and containers through a network of more than 750 service centres, supporting more than 500,000 customer touch-points for global brands such as Procter & Gamble, Sysco and Nestlé.

CHEP is part of the Brambles Group and operates in approximately 60 countries with its largest operations in North America and Europe.

For more information, visit www.chep.com.

Industry
Transportation & Logistics
Company Size
5,001-10,000 employees
Headquarters
Addlestone, GB
Year Founded
1945
Website
chep.com
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