Head of Peer Review Management

Springer Nature

10d•$100,000 - $120,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The Head of Peer Review Management is responsible for defining and driving the strategic design, governance, and organisational adoption of the future-state PRM/AE workflows across the Nature Portfolio (NP). Together with the Director of Editorial and Author Support, this role will help set the direction across process, roles, systems, and governance to ensure scalable, standardised, and future-ready solutions for PRM. The role provides decisive leadership within the workflow transformation governance, balancing efficiency, quality, and complexity, while aligning cross-functional stakeholders across Editorial, PRM, Publishing, Technology, and Operations. It ensures successful, sustainable implementation through clear performance metrics, continuous improvement, and a focus on delivering measurable outcomes. This role will act as the primary PRM representative in relation to SNAPP development to enable the NP migration to SNAPP. The scope of this role will also include involvement in other strategic projects and initiatives as these arise, and in the long term will form part of the NP PRM senior management team responsible for delivering a high level of editorial support to the expanding NP group of journals.

Requirements

Strong operational and project management experience.
Excellent understanding of editorial workflows and processes, and the needs and challenges of publishing high-quality research journals.
Experience of leading complex projects and change initiatives and working with cross-functional teams.
Experience in driving the successful adoption of new workflows and technologies.
Experience in applying effective change management concepts and techniques.
Ability to demonstrate a highly analytical and logical approach, including data-informed decision making.
Strong communication skills, including articulating complex concepts in a clear and concise manner.
Leadership skills, including the ability to lead cross-functional teams and inspire confidence in teams.
Excellent interpersonal skills – communicating effectively with a wide range of colleagues and stakeholders.
Strong time-management and organisational skills.
Ability to act independently and take the initiative - action-oriented and self-motivated.
Creative thinking in improving processes and workflows.
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent demonstrable experience in a similar role.

Nice To Haves

Project Management certification would be advantageous but is not necessary.

Responsibilities

Take ownership of and accountability for the future-state AE workflows, providing strategic direction for workflow design and implementation, ensuring solutions are scalable, standardised and aligned for SNAPP.
Act as a lead for PRM within the workflow transformation project governance, helping to define decision frameworks, escalation routes, and accountabilities while resolving cross-functional conflicts and competing priorities.
Act as the lead NP PRM stakeholder representing the PRM needs to the SNAPP product team and ensuring SNAPP readiness within the PRM teams, taking responsibility for the planning and delivery of training and onboarding of PRM teams.
Lead the overall change strategy for PRM, overseeing the communication strategy, training and onboarding, and transition planning for impacted teams. Anticipate and manage resistance, risk to morale, and capability gaps.
Provide organisational design and role transformation support, defining future roles, responsibilities, and capability models within PRM, and ensuring clarity on ownership of tasks across the workflow.
Collaborate with Editorial to define success metrics and drive ongoing iteration and optimisation of PRM workflows post-implementation, ensuring that solutions align with business objectives.
Provide direction to PRM workstream leads, ensuring implementation remains aligned to strategic intent and workstreams are co-ordinated and prioritised effectively.
Use a data-informed approach to measure PRM performance and outcomes and facilitate continuous improvement.
Build strong working relationships with adjacent teams (Editorial, GPO, Production, PP&I, Tech teams etc.) to facilitate smooth delivery of the workflow transformation and other projects as these arise.
Provide cross-functional alignment and stakeholder leadership in collaboration with Editorial, Publishing, Production, Tech and Operations and ensuring decisions reflect shared priorities across business units.