Iberia Technology Lead
Unilabs · Porto
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Job Title: Iberia Technology Lead
Location: Porto, Portugal
Type: Full-time – Hybrid working (~3 days/week in office)
Reporting to: Head of IT Iberia & Global Service Delivery
Direct reports: Architecture Manager; Interoperability Manager; Infrastructure Manager; and potential future technical leadership roles.
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About Unilabs:
Headquartered in Geneva and part of the A.P. Moller Group, Unilabs is one of Europe’s leading medical diagnostics companies, offering a complete range of laboratory, pathology, genetics, and imaging services to patients across 14 countries. Unilabs invests heavily in technology, equipment, and people – using digital technologies in its state-of-the-art laboratories and imaging institutes – to improve the lives of close to 100 million people every year.
Role Overview:
Unilabs is undertaking a significant transformation of its technology landscape to improve service delivery, resilience, operational efficiency and alignment with long-term strategic objectives across Portugal and Spain.
The Iberia Technology Lead is the senior technology leader responsible for Architecture, Engineering, Interoperability, Infrastructure, Cloud and Technology Services across Iberia. The role ensures that applications, integrations, infrastructure and cloud services evolve as a secure, scalable, resilient and maintainable ecosystem while supporting both business growth and technology modernisation.
Acting as the technical deputy to the Head of IT Iberia, the role provides strategic leadership across the technology estate, ensuring business priorities, technical roadmaps, operational resilience and technology investments are aligned and effectively governed.
The role operates within the global UniTech technology framework and works in close functional alignment with the Global Head of Technology Design. While reporting locally to the Head of IT Iberia, the Iberia Technology Lead is accountable for ensuring that Iberia technology strategy, architecture and engineering decisions follow Group technology principles, target architectures, standards and governance. The role represents Iberia requirements into global technology design and contributes actively to the evolution of Group standards, while ensuring their effective adoption and implementation across Iberia.
The position plays a key role in the continued evolution of UniTech and the Iberia operating model, establishing clear accountability between Iberia teams, Global Technology Design, Group technology functions, Cybersecurity, Product teams and external suppliers.
Key Responsibilities
Technology Strategy & Leadership
- Act as the primary technical advisor to the Head of IT Iberia.
- Define and maintain the Iberia technology strategy and multi-year technology roadmap within the Group technology strategy, target architecture and standards.
- Translate Group technology direction, architectural principles and standards into Iberia implementation priorities, identifying local requirements, constraints and justified exceptions.
- Work in close functional partnership with the Global Head of Technology Design and relevant Group technology leaders, ensuring early alignment on strategic technology and architecture decisions.
- Represent Iberia requirements and priorities into Group technology strategy, architecture and standards, actively contributing to their continued evolution.
- Establish local technology governance, decision-making frameworks and accountability across Architecture, Interoperability and Infrastructure domains, consistent with Group governance and decision rights.
- Ensure technology strategies, standards and roadmaps address the operational, regulatory and business requirements of both Portugal and Spain while maintaining alignment with Group direction and exceptions are reviewed through the appropriate Group architecture/technology governance forums.
- Partner with Product and Service Management leaders to translate business priorities into sequenced technology roadmaps, ensuring clear accountability between product direction, technical delivery and operational service ownership.
- Resolve cross-domain priorities, architectural conflicts, dependencies and capacity constraints across Architecture, Interoperability and Infrastructure.
- Lead strategic technology planning and provide recommendations regarding investment priorities, technology evolution and risk trade-offs.
- Drive the evolution of the Iberia technology operating model.
People Leadership
- Lead, coach and develop the managers responsible for Architecture, Interoperability and Infrastructure.
- Foster a culture of accountability, ownership, delegation and continuous improvement.
- Establish clear objectives, performance expectations and development plans.
- Build succession capability within all technical domains.
- Support hiring, retention and leadership development of key technical talent.
- Strengthen collaboration between technology teams and business stakeholders.
Architecture & Engineering Leadership
- Lead the implementation and evolution of the Iberia technology architecture in alignment with Group target architecture, technology principles and standards.
- Drive the evolution of core platforms towards more modular, scalable and maintainable architectures.
- Guide major architecture decisions across development and platform initiatives ensuring alignment with Global Technology Design and appropriate Group architecture governance.
- Adopt and operationalise Group engineering and technology standards or, where not available, establish engineering standards covering quality, testing, observability, security and CI/CD in alignment with Global Head of Technology Design
- Reduce technical debt and architectural complexity while maintaining delivery momentum.
- Promote modern software engineering practices and continuous improvement.
- Ensure consistent governance over platform design, system integration and technology standards.
Interoperability & Integration
- Define and govern enterprise integration principles and standards.
- Ensure interoperability solutions are scalable, secure and aligned with business objectives.
- Promote API-first and loosely coupled integration approaches.
- Oversee integration risk, dependency management and platform interoperability.
- Ensure licensed and internally developed solutions integrate effectively within the broader technology landscape.
- Guide strategic decisions regarding healthcare interoperability standards, integration platforms and integration governance.
Infrastructure, Cloud & Technology Services
- Provide executive oversight of infrastructure, cloud, platform and operational technology services.
- Ensure infrastructure strategies support current and future business needs.
- Oversee service reliability, availability, lifecycle management and resilience.
- Govern major infrastructure investment decisions and technology refresh plans.
- Ensure cloud adoption, platform modernisation and infrastructure transformation are aligned with overall technology strategy.
- Maintain oversight of cybersecurity remediation priorities, infrastructure risks and operational resilience measures.
Operational Resilience & Service Transition
- Ensure business continuity, disaster recovery and resilience capabilities remain effective and regularly validated.
- Establish clear service transition requirements for all technology initiatives.
- Ensure operational readiness, support ownership and documentation requirements are met before production deployment.
- Drive structured problem management and resolution of recurring technology issues.
- Ensure technology risks are identified, reported and actively managed.
Technology Supplier Governance
- Provide executive governance for strategic technology suppliers and service providers.
- Oversee supplier performance, contractual obligations, risks, service levels and improvement plans.
- Support sourcing decisions, build-versus-buy assessments and technology procurement initiatives.
- Manage relationships with key technology partners and vendors.
- Ensure supplier strategies align with Iberia technology objectives.
Technology Portfolio & Investment Management
- Own the consolidated Iberia technology investment roadmap.
- Lead budget planning and technology investment prioritisation across technical domains.
- Develop business cases supporting transformation and modernisation initiatives.
- Balance business value, technical risk, operational impact and cost considerations.
- Provide technology portfolio reporting and investment recommendations to senior leadership.
Governance, Risk & Compliance
- Maintain oversight of technology risks, infrastructure risks, integration risks and architectural debt.
- Ensure alignment with cybersecurity policies, governance controls and regulatory requirements.
- Support compliance with GDPR, healthcare regulations and Group standards.
- Ensure key technology decisions are documented through appropriate governance forums.
- Create visibility through KPIs, dashboards and executive reporting.
Key Success Measures
- Delivery of an integrated Iberia technology roadmap.
- Improved availability, resilience and performance of critical technology services.
- Reduction of technical debt, infrastructure risk and integration complexity.
- Successful delivery of technology transformation initiatives.
- Effective collaboration across Architecture, Interoperability and Infrastructure domains.
- Strong succession capability and leadership maturity across technical teams.
- Improved technology governance, transparency and decision-making.
- Technology investment aligned to business priorities and measurable outcomes.
- Positive stakeholder feedback from business, Group Technology and key partners.
- Demonstrated alignment of Iberia technology architecture and roadmaps with Group technology strategy, standards and target architecture.
- Effective adoption and reuse of Group technology platforms, patterns and capabilities, with exceptions transparently governed.
- Strong collaboration and positive stakeholder feedback from Global Technology Design, Cybersecurity, Product teams and Iberia business leadership.
Requirements
Qualifications & Experience Required
- Significant leadership experience across technology, architecture, engineering or infrastructure functions.
- Experience managing managers and multi-disciplinary technology teams.
- Proven leadership in technology transformation programmes.
- Strong understanding of architecture, software engineering, infrastructure and cloud environments.
- Experience governing complex technology portfolios and strategic roadmaps.
- Experience in supplier and vendor management.
- Strong stakeholder-management experience within matrix organisations.
- Experience balancing operational excellence with transformation and innovation.
- Fluent English and Portuguese; Spanish proficiency is strongly advantageous.
Qualifications & Experience Preferred
- Healthcare, diagnostics, life sciences or regulated-industry experience.
- Experience modernising legacy platforms and technology estates.
- Knowledge of interoperability standards such as HL7 and FHIR.
- Domain-driven design, event-driven architectures and modern integration patterns.
- Cloud transformation experience in Azure and hybrid environments.
- Awareness of NIS2, cybersecurity frameworks and AI-assisted development practices.
Leadership Capabilities
- Strategic thinking with strong execution focus.
- Ability to bring structure and clarity to complex environments.
- Strong people leadership and coaching capability.
- Effective decision-making under ambiguity.
- Excellent stakeholder and relationship management.
- Ability to influence across organisational boundaries.
- Commercial awareness and technology investment discipline.
- Strong ownership, accountability and customer orientation.
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