Executive Director, Quality, Operational Excellence & Governance

About the position Labcorp is seeking an Executive Director, Quality, Operational Excellence & Governance to join our team at our Durham, NC location. Location: Burlington, NC or Durham, NC. Applicants who live within 35 miles of either the Burlington, NC or Durham, NC location will follow a hybrid schedule. This schedule includes a minimum of three in office days per week at an assigned location, either Burlington or Durham, supporting both collaboration and flexibility. Work Schedule: This is a full‑time, exempt (salaried) position assigned to a First Shift schedule, with standard business hours of Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. in your local time zone. Business needs may occasionally require flexibility in work hours, including earlier, later, or additional hours, with reasonable notice provided when possible. The Executive Director, Quality, Operational Excellence & Governance is a senior technology leader responsible for building and scaling quality, reliability, and continuous improvement capability across Technology Operations. This role ensures structured problem‑solving, Lean practices, and visual management are consistently embedded into daily operational work to eliminate recurring issues, improve flow, and enhance the technology experience for internal customers. This leader serves as the enterprise authority for IT quality and operational excellence. The role emphasizes hands‑on leadership, coaching, mentoring, and Gemba‑based engagement to help teams apply quality tools in real‑world scenarios. The focus is on practical, sustainable improvement rather than policy‑driven or review‑driven governance.

Responsibilities

• Quality Tools Training, Coaching & Adoption
• Design and deliver a quality tools training and mentoring program for Technology Operations teams.
• Coach leaders and practitioners in the use of structured problem‑solving and Lean methodologies, including A3 problem solving, 5‑Whys, Value Stream Mapping, Kaizen, 5S, and visual management.
• Ensure quality tools are used for decision‑making and operational improvement.
• Build scalable quality capability through a teach‑the‑teacher model to support organizational growth.
• Incident & Problem Management Excellence
• Implement disciplined, repeatable problem‑solving processes for recurring incidents.
• Ensure chronic issues are addressed through A3 problem solving, root cause analysis, countermeasure development, and follow‑up.
• Provide leadership for major incident quality reviews, including 5‑Whys analysis, temporary countermeasures, and long‑term prevention.
• Support teams in shifting from reactive response to sustainable issue elimination.
• Process Improvement & Lean Operations
• Lead end‑to‑end process improvement initiatives grounded in Lean principles.
• Identify waste, bottlenecks, handoffs, and failure points across operational workflows.
• Lead Kaizen sessions that drive measurable improvements in flow, speed, quality, reliability, and customer experience.
• Metrics, Visual Management & Operational Transparency
• Define and standardize operational metrics and KPIs across Technology Operations.
• Lead adoption of Visual Daily Management practices to increase operational transparency across sites, regions, and platforms.
• Train leaders to use metrics for learning and operational decision‑making.
• Gemba‑Based Leadership
• Establish Gemba‑based leadership expectations across Technology Operations.
• Regularly engage teams where work is performed to observe processes, identify issues, and uncover learning opportunities.
• Model hands‑on, curiosity‑driven leadership to strengthen operational culture.
• Process Excellence & Governance
• Serve as the IT Process Excellence leader responsible for continuous improvement standards.
• Reinforce governance through coaching, transparency, and leadership accountability rather than through administrative requirements.
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Enablement
• Partner with product, platform, and infrastructure teams to embed SRE principles such as Service Level Objectives, error budgets, resilience patterns, and operational learning.
• Ensure teams own reliability as part of daily work and apply consistent quality practices.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree.
• 10 or more years of experience in IT operations, quality, or operational excellence.
• 10 or more years of experience applying Lean and quality tools.
• 10 or more years of experience building and scaling quality and continuous improvement capabilities across large, complex IT organizations.
• 10 or more years of experience working effectively with senior technology and business leaders.
• Ability to teach, mentor, and develop leaders at scale.
• Executive‑level communication and influence.
• Structured problem‑solving skills and systems thinking.
• Ability to balance operational rigor with practicality and speed.
• Hands‑on leadership style with strong operational credibility.

Nice-to-haves

• Master’s degree.
• Certifications in Lean, Six Sigma, or Quality leadership.
• 10 or more years of experience embedding SRE practices into IT operations or platform teams.
• 10 or more years of experience supporting coaching‑led organizational change and continuous improvement initiatives.

Benefits

• Employees regularly scheduled to work 20 or more hours per week are eligible for comprehensive benefits including: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, STD/LTD, 401(k), Paid Time Off (PTO) or Flexible Time Off (FTO), Tuition Reimbursement and Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
• Employees regularly scheduled to work less than 20 hours, Casual, Intern, and Temporary employees are only eligible to participate in the 401(k) Plan.
• Employees who are regularly scheduled to work a 7 on/7 off schedule are eligible to receive all the foregoing benefits except PTO or FTO.

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