Software Delivery Lead

Location: Lake Forest, CA (on-site)
Job Type: Full-time
Role Type: Individual Contributor

Role Overview

At Alcon, we're passionate about enhancing sight and helping people see brilliantly. With more than 25,000 associates, we innovate fearlessly, champion progress, and act swiftly to impact global eye health. We foster an inclusive culture, recognizing your contributions and offering opportunities to grow your career like never before. Together, we make a difference in the lives of our patients and customers. Are you ready to join us?

The Software Delivery Lead is accountable for driving predictable execution and delivery outcomes for complex software programs. The role leads integrated delivery planning, readiness, dependency management, commitment visibility, and execution orchestration.

The Software Delivery Lead works in close partnership with the Software Lead:

• Software Lead: Owns technical direction, engineering decisions, technical quality, and engineering leadership.
• Software Delivery Lead: Owns integrated delivery planning, readiness, commitment visibility, dependency coordination, and execution orchestration.

This role does not include people management, software architecture ownership, or technical design authority.

Key Responsibilities

Delivery Leadership and Predictable Execution

• Own integrated delivery planning and execution for assigned software programs.
• Establish clear commitments, milestones, readiness expectations, and execution plans.
• Define and enforce readiness criteria before execution begins.
• Monitor execution and milestone confidence to identify risks, dependencies, capacity constraints, and plan deviations early.
• Drive corrective actions and recovery plans when commitments are at risk.
• Support delivery environments that combine iterative development with milestone-driven program commitments.

Delivery Planning and Leadership Visibility

• Serve as the primary point of contact for software delivery status, integrated planning, and cross-functional dependencies.
• Maintain an accurate, consolidated view of delivery progress, milestone confidence, risks, dependencies, and forecasts.
• Provide clear, decision-ready updates to software, project, program, and senior leadership.
• Ensure consistent delivery commitments and messaging across project and program forums.
• Provide decision-ready inputs into Software R&D portfolio reviews and Monthly Operating Reviews covering milestones, delivery forecasts, dependencies, capacity, risks, and required leadership decisions.
• Use dashboards and delivery indicators to support execution, decisions, and escalation rather than reporting alone.

Scope, Resource, and Budget Trade-off Management

• Lead structured assessments of scope changes and their impact on schedule, capacity, cost, dependencies, quality, regulatory commitments, and delivery risk.
• Support delivery-level resource planning and identify capacity or skill constraints early.
• Maintain visibility into software delivery budgets and spend at the project or program level.
• Frame clear trade-off options and recommend commitment adjustments when plans are no longer achievable.
• Escalate trade-offs requiring technical, quality, regulatory, financial, project, or senior-leadership decisions.

Cross-Functional Execution

• Coordinate dependencies across software, hardware, systems, quality, regulatory, operations, and other applicable functions.
• Establish clear owners and completion expectations for cross-functional dependencies.
• Drive resolution of blockers within established program and functional boundaries, escalating when resolution requires leadership intervention.
• Support one or more programs in parallel, depending on program size and complexity.

Role Boundaries

This role owns

• Integrated software delivery planning and execution orchestration
• Delivery readiness, commitment visibility, and milestone confidence
• Delivery risk identification, corrective-action coordination, and escalation
• Cross-functional dependency coordination
• Delivery-level resource, capacity, and budget visibility
• Delivery forecasts, trade-off recommendations, and decision-ready leadership reporting
• Consistent delivery inputs into portfolio reviews and Monthly Operating Reviews

This role does not own

• People management or performance management
• Software architecture, engineering decisions, or technical quality
• Formal technical, quality, or regulatory approval
• Cost-center ownership or financial approval
• Final approval of material scope, schedule, quality, regulatory, or financial trade-offs
• Tool administration or Scrum-only ceremony ownership

Authority and Leadership Model

The Software Delivery Lead is accountable for driving resolution of delivery issues and recommending trade-offs when commitments are at risk. The role drives corrective actions within established program boundaries and escalates decisions involving scope, schedule, capacity, cost, quality, or regulatory commitments to the appropriate accountable leader.

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