Cost & Budget Lead

The Cost & Budget Lead in Capital Projects is responsible for designing, implementing, and overseeing cost control and budgeting frameworks across large-scale capital project portfolios. This role ensures financial accuracy, thorough forecasting, strategic risk management, and informed decision-making throughout the project life cycle—from planning through execution and closure.

This includes oversight of both Capex and Opex budgets within the GCP portfolio, ensuring financial accuracy, proactive forecasting, and strategic cost governance throughout the project lifecycle.

This role will directly report to Director Cost & Risk Management within Project Controls Department, Global Capital Projects

In this role you will be responsible for:

Global Capital Project Budget Management

• Lead the development and consolidation of budgets for all GCP initiatives.
• Ensure alignment of project budgets with corporate financial objectives and governance standards.

Opex Budget Oversight

• Manage operational expenditure budgets related to GCP activities (e.g., maintenance, sustaining capital, project support costs).
• Track and report Opex performance against forecasts, identifying optimization opportunities.

Cost Control & Forecasting

• Implement cost control systems and processes for global projects.
• Prepare monthly forecasts, variance analysis, and financial reports for Capex and Opex.

Develop and implement cost control systems

• Create and maintain cost control tools, procedures, and documentation to support robust budget management across project

Budget planning and estimates

• Lead the creation of initial cost estimates and project budgets, including building detailed WBS breakdowns

Monitor and forecast

• Track actuals versus budget, drive accruals and periodic forecast updates, prepare monthly/weekly forecasts, and report variances

Change Control & Risk Management

• Maintain cost risk registers and manage change requests impacting budgets.
• Support contingency planning and scenario analysis for global projects.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate with project managers, finance, procurement, and regional teams to ensure accurate reporting and compliance.
• Present cost performance updates to senior leadership and governance boards.

Tools & Systems

• Cost control & forecasting software (e.g., SAP, Oracle)
• Advanced Excel (pivot tables, macros, data modeling)
• ERP, Procurement systems (Ariba, Coupa etc)

Why you?

Basic Qualifications & Skills:

We are looking for professionals with these required skills to achieve our goals:

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance, Engineering, Project Management or related field.
• 8+ years of experience in Cost Controlling, with at least 3 years in a leadership role within the pharmaceutical/life sciences industry or similar industries (Oil & Gas, Power/Energy sector)
• Experience as Finance controller or Business Controller for Business budgeting and OPEX tracking.
• Experience in Cost control & forecasting software (e.g., SAP, Oracle etc)
• Advanced Excel (pivot tables, macros, data modeling).
• Senior stakeholder management and project reporting experience.

Preferred Qualifications & Skills:

• MSc or other Chartered / Professional Qualification in a relevant discipline
• Good pharma background or working experience from capital projects. Not mandatory.
• Solid knowledge of GSK project process, User requirement management, quality and compliance requirement, site project completion and pre-start processes, and how these impact engineering and design, construction, commissioning, and qualification contracts
• Familiar with the GCP Project Management Framework (PMF), relevant engineering standards and compliance requirement as well as Quality Management Systems
• PMP (Project Management Professional) or CCP (Certified Cost Professional) or PMI-SP (Scheduling Professional) or Lean Six Sigma or similar process improvement credentials

#LI-GSK

Please visit  GSK US Benefits Summary to learn more about the comprehensive benefits program GSK offers US employees.

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases – to impact health at scale.

People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people.

Should you require any adjustments to our process to assist you in demonstrating your strengths and capabilities contact us at [email protected] where you can also request a call.

Please note should your inquiry not relate to adjustments, we will not be able to support you through these channels. However, we have created a Recruitment FAQ guide. Click the link where you will find answers to multiple questions we receive

GSK is an Equal Opportunity Employer. This ensures that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), parental status, national origin, age, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), military service or any basis prohibited under federal, state or local law.

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