Senior Specialist, Product Operation Lead

Job Description

Sr. Spclst , Product Operation Lead

The Opportunity

• Based in Hyderabad, join a global healthcare biopharma company and be part of a 130- year legacy of success backed by ethical integrity, forward momentum, and an inspiring mission to achieve new milestones in global healthcare.
• Be part of an organisation driven by digital technology and data-backed approaches that support a diversified portfolio of prescription medicines, vaccines, and animal health products.
• Drive innovation and execution excellence. Be a part of a team with passion for using data, analytics, and insights to drive decision-making, and which creates custom software, allowing us to tackle some of the world's greatest health threats.

Our Technology Centers focus on creating a space where teams can come together to deliver business solutions that save and improve lives. An integral part of our companys’ IT operating model, Tech Centers are globally distributed locations where each IT division has employees to enable our digital transformation journey and drive business outcomes. These locations, in addition to the other sites, are essential to supporting our business and strategy.

A focused group of leaders in each Tech Center helps to ensure we can manage and improve each location, from investing in growth, success, and well-being of our people, to making sure colleagues from each IT division feel a sense of belonging to managing critical emergencies. And together, we must leverage the strength of our team to collaborate globally to optimize connections and share best practices across the Tech Centers.

Role Overview

We are seeking a Product Operations Lead to join a cross-functional product team within the Manufacturing Value Team in Hyderabad. This is a hands-on, individual contributor role where you will serve as the primary point of coordination across L1, L2, and L3 support, ensuring service stability, effective incident response, and smooth production operations through close collaboration with Product Owner, business stakeholders, and partner IT teams. 

As a Product Operations Lead, you will own and drive Incident Management, Problem Management, and Change Enablement, ensuring services meet agreed SLAs/SLOs and operational standards. You will lead through technical expertise and process ownership and play an active role in improving support processes and overall operational maturity. 

What will you do in this role

·       Drive continuous improvement in service reliability, including reduction of MTTR, incident volume, and repeat issues

·       Ensure effective monitoring, alerting, and observability are in place to proactively detect and prevent incidents

·       Partner with engineering teams to automate operational processes, improve deployment stability, and enhance runbooks

·       Support a DevOps culture by enabling shift-left practices and shared ownership of production systems

·       Serve as the primary operational liaison with internal IT teams and business stakeholders, proactively communicating risks, upcoming changes, and support impacts  

·       Monitor and review operational performance (incident trends, escalations, SLAs/SLOs), and lead regular operational reviews with stakeholders to identify risks and improvement initiatives 

·       Coordinate operational readiness for releases and changes, participating in Change Enablement activities such as risk assessment, deployment planning, and post‑change validation 

·       Lead Major Incident Management, including incident bridges/war rooms, cross‑tier coordination across L1/L2/L3, ownership assignment, and timely, accurate stakeholder communications 

·       Ensure effective incident lifecycle management, including proper classification, documentation, closure, and handoff to Problem Management where required.  

·       Own and drive Problem Management for recurring or high-impact incidents, ensuring thorough root cause analysis and implementation of preventive actions

·       Mentor engineers and support staff on incident handling, operational best practices, and service ownership  

What you should have :

·       Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related discipline 

·       At least 8-10 years of overall IT experience with significant hands-on experience in application or production support for business-critical systems 

Required Skills & Experience 

Primary Skills (Mandatory)

Production Support

Operation experience with team handling experience

L1/L2/L3 support

Solid understanding of application architectures (web, APIs, integrations)

Monitoring and observability tools

Secondary Skills (Good to have not mandatory)

CI/CD

Pharma/Life science/Healthcare industry

·       Proven experience acting as a lead or senior support engineer, coordinating across L1/L2/L3 support teams in a production environment 

·       Strong collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to work effectively across teams 

·       Strong experience driving Problem Management, including root cause analysis, corrective/preventive actions, and reducing repeat incidents 

·       Hands‑on experience supporting Change Enablement, including risk assessment, deployment readiness, and post‑change validation to ensure production stability 

·       Demonstrated ability to coordinate across product, engineering, support, vendors, and business stakeholders, influencing outcomes without direct people‑management authority 

·       Solid understanding of application architectures (web, APIs, integrations) and experience troubleshooting issues across application, platform, and infrastructure layers 

·       Experience with monitoring and observability tools

·       Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and release management practices in DevOps environments

Success in this role will be measured by:

·       Reduction in MTTR and incident volume

·       Improvement in SLA/SLO adherence

·       Reduction in repeat/root-cause incidents

·       Smooth, low-risk production releases

Increased operational maturity and automation

Our technology teams operate as business partners, proposing ideas and innovative solutions that enable new organizational capabilities. We collaborate internationally to deliver services and solutions that help everyone be more productive and enable innovation.

Who we are

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been inventing , bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us—and start making your impact today.

#HYDIT2025

Required Skills:

Business Systems, Computer Science, Data Engineering, Data Visualization, Design Applications, Incident Management, Information Communication Technology (ICT), Operations Management, Preventive Action, Production Management, Release Management, Risk Assessments, Software Configurations, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture, Stakeholder Communications, System Designs, System Integration, Testing

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

VISA Sponsorship:

Travel Requirements:

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Valid Driving License:

Hazardous Material(s):

Job Posting End Date:

07/1/2026

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