Soft Services Manager

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Location: Kildare, Ireland

Sector: Pharmaceutical (GMP and Non-GMP Operations)

Reporting To: Account Director / Site Facilities Manager (to be confirmed by hiring team)

Role Purpose

The Soft Services Manager will take full operational responsibility for the delivery of catering and janitorial services across a pharmaceutical campus in Kildare, covering both GMP and non-GMP areas. The role requires a strong understanding of compliance-driven environments, vendor management capability, financial control discipline, and a client-focused approach to service delivery within a highly regulated setting where every day must be treated as audit day.

Key Responsibilities

The successful candidate will manage the day-to-day delivery of catering and cleaning services across the site, ensuring consistency and quality across both regulated and non-regulated zones, including overseeing cleaning schedules and standards within GMP areas in line with pharmaceutical compliance requirements.

A core element of this role is the management of third-party service providers delivering soft services on behalf of JLL. This includes conducting daily site condition reviews and walkdowns to proactively identify gaps before they become issues, reviewing and validating scope of work against contracted deliverables, reviewing and challenging pricing against scope to ensure commercial accuracy and value, and holding providers accountable to outcome-based performance rather than simple task completion. The manager will issue and manage permits to work in line with site safety and GMP protocols, ensuring all third-party activity is properly authorised, documented, and compliant before work commences.

On the catering side, the manager will own overall catering quality, ensuring menu standards, presentation, nutritional variety, hygiene, and customer satisfaction are consistently maintained to brand and client expectations. This includes managing vendor or in-house catering teams, conducting regular quality audits and customer feedback reviews, and driving corrective action where standards slip. Food safety compliance (HACCP) remains a core requirement.

The role carries full budget control responsibility across both catering and janitorial services, including financial administration using FM financial control systems. The manager must be competent in raising purchase orders (POs) and goods receipts (GRs), reconciling invoices against delivered scope, and producing budget variance forecasting and reporting to explain and manage deviations from plan. Accurate, timely financial administration is essential to maintaining budget integrity and client trust.

The manager will lead, develop, and performance manage a multi-disciplinary team and vendor base, including rostering, training, and ensuring adequate coverage across shifts where applicable, while maintaining full compliance with health and safety legislation, GMP protocols, food hygiene regulations, and relevant JLL and client policies. The manager will liaise closely with the client's EHS, Quality, and Operations teams to ensure soft services do not compromise GMP integrity, and will own the site's audit-ready posture, ensuring documentation, records, and physical conditions would withstand an unannounced client or regulatory inspection at any time. This includes managing associated CAPA (Corrective and Preventive Action) processes.

Essential Criteria

Candidates should have proven experience managing soft services (catering and cleaning/janitorial) within a GMP-regulated or similarly regulated environment such as pharmaceutical, biotech, or medical device manufacturing. Demonstrated experience managing third-party providers delivering scope on behalf of a managing agent such as JLL is essential, including scope review, pricing review, and driving outcome-based rather than activity-based performance.

Hands-on experience with FM financial control systems is required, specifically raising POs and GRs, invoice reconciliation, and budget variance forecasting and reporting. Strong commercial and financial acumen is essential to managing site budgets with accuracy and accountability.

Experience conducting daily site condition reviews and issuing permits to work is required, along with a genuine audit-ready mentality, operating as though every day is an audit, with site conditions, documentation, and compliance records always inspection-ready.

A solid working knowledge of GMP principles, cleanroom/controlled area cleaning protocols, HACCP, and food safety management systems is required, along with demonstrated ownership of catering quality standards and customer satisfaction outcomes. Strong people and vendor management experience is essential. Excellent communication skills are needed to engage effectively with client stakeholders, including Quality, EHS, and Finance functions.

A relevant third-level qualification in Facilities Management, Hospitality, Food Science, or a related discipline is desirable, as are recognised qualifications such as HACCP Level 3, IOSH/NEBOSH, or equivalent.

Desirable Criteria

Experience working within an outsourced FM/soft services provider (such as JLL) in a client-facing role managing a multi-vendor delivery model would be advantageous, as would prior exposure to pharmaceutical manufacturing environments specifically. Familiarity with CMMS, FM financial systems (e.g., Coupa, SAP, or similar PO/GR platforms), and digital permit-to-work systems is desirable.

Key Attributes

The ideal candidate will be hands-on, detail-oriented, and comfortable operating in a highly regulated, compliance-first culture where there is zero tolerance for complacency. Strong commercial and financial acumen is needed to manage budgets, review vendor scope and pricing, and maintain accurate financial administration. The candidate must be able to build trusted relationships with client representatives and third-party providers alike, hold vendors accountable to outcomes, maintain high catering quality standards, and remain flexible to work across site operational hours with occasional out-of-hours cover as required.

Location:

On-site –Kildare, IRL

If this job description resonates with you, we encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet all of the requirements. We’re interested in getting to know you and what you bring to the table!

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