Job Description :

Automation Center of Excellence (CoE) Lead

Role Overview :

The Automation CoE Lead will establish, scale, and govern the Automation (Hyperautomation) Center of Excellence across discovery, design, build, run, and continuous improvement. The role partners closely with Sales, Pre-Sales, Delivery, and Customer stakeholders to drive requirement discovery, solutioning, delivery excellence, support, and measurable value realization. The CoE Lead reports to Business Head and is accountable for business outcomes, platform stewardship, pipeline growth, reliability, ROI and building customer relationship.

CoE Scope & Technology Landscape :

- Robotic Process Automation (RPA) : UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism (or equivalent).

- Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) : ABBYY, Azure Form Recognizer, Google Document AI.

- Workflow & Low-Code : Microsoft Power Platform (Power Automate/Apps), ServiceNow, Appian.

- Process/Task Mining : Celonis, UiPath Process Mining, Power Automate Process Mining.

- Integration & Orchestration : APIs, queues/events, enterprise schedulers; credential vaulting.

- Test Automation & QE : Selenium/Playwright, API automation, performance testing.

- Run Operations & SRE : Monitoring/observability, incident/change management, reliability (MTTR/CFR).

- Governance & Risk : Intake/prioritization, design authority, standards/guardrails, compliance and auditability.

Key Responsibilities :

Strategic Leadership :

- A CoE Lead isnt just managing teams; theyre building frameworks, governance models, and best practices from the ground up.

- Prior leadership in setting up Automation CoEs is highly desirable.

- Driving GTM Strategy

CoE Strategy & Governance :

- Define CoE charter, operating model, intake portal and prioritization, design authority, and guardrails.

- Publish standards for solution architecture, security/compliance, coding conventions, testing, and release management.

- Establish reusable asset catalog : components, connectors, templates, accelerators, and reference runbooks.

Sales & Pre-Sales Enablement :

- Co-create value propositions, GTM collateral, discovery playbooks, and ROI/TCO models with Sales/Pre-Sales.

- Own technical responses for RFP/RFI; lead demos and POCs; improve win rate and sales cycle efficiency.

- Produce case studies with quantified outcomes (hours saved, STP%, accuracy, MTTR improvements).

Customer Requirement Gathering & Solutioning :

- Run discovery and process assessments; apply process/task mining to qualify opportunities.

- Design end-to-end automation architectures : IDP + RPA + workflow + APIs with exception handling, audit, and controls.

- Embed NFRs (security, performance, reliability, compliance) and change management.

Delivery & Run Operations :

- Plan and oversee delivery; enforce SDLC, CI/CD, and quality gates; track KPIs and SLAs.

- Stand up production-grade run operations (monitoring, alerts, triage, incident/problem/change).

- Lead hypercare and continuous improvement; optimize licenses/capacity; drive FinOps for platform cost.

Leadership Reporting & Stakeholder Management :

- Publish dashboards for pipeline, bookings, revenue/margin, automation volume, stability, and business impact.

- Run governance forums; manage risks/roadblocks; align cross-functional stakeholders and executive sponsors.

- Own CoE P&L view : investment utilization, platform adoption, and ROI against annual targets.

Required Skills & Experience :

- 18+ years in Automation/Engineering with 8-6 years leading an Automation / RPA / Hyperautomation CoE.

- Hands-on across RPA, IDP, workflow/low-code, integration, and test automation; strong solution architecture skills.

- Experience implementing process/task mining and converting insights into a qualified automation pipeline.

- Deep understanding of security, compliance, auditability, and controls for enterprise automation.

- Proven pre-sales engagement : discovery, solutioning, POCs, business case/ROI modelling, and deal support.

- Operational leadership in production run models : monitoring/observability, MTTR/CFR, incident/change management.

Education & Certifications :

- Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related discipline.

- Preferred : Vendor certifications (UiPath/Automation Anywhere/Blue Prism), Microsoft Power Platform, and ITIL/SRE.