Head of Software Development Governance, Integrity & Secure SDLC

€92,600.00 - €172,000.00

Expected Annual Base Salary Range for role: 92,600.00 - 172,000.00 EUR

The base salary offered is determined based on gender-neutral objectives, such as relevant skills, competencies and experience in accordance with the Novartis pay setting policy and upon joining Novartis will be reviewed periodically.

In addition to your base salary, you may be eligible for a performance-based bonus depending on certain performance parameters.

The rewards of being part of our team go far beyond base pay and incentives. We also offer a variety of competitive benefits in kind to help you thrive personally and professionally, such as insurance plans, retirement plans, wellbeing resources and global recognition programs. In addition, we provide flexible and hybrid working options, where possible, and minimum 14 weeks paid parental leave.

Pay equity is a fundamental principle of our employment policy and reflects our commitment to create a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment that treats all employees with dignity and respect, as outlined in our Code of Ethics.

Read our brochure to learn more about our global total rewards offering:

https://www.novartis.com/sites/novartis_com/files/novartis-life-handbook.pdf

Note: Benefits and compensation may vary by country and are subject to local legal requirements, including provisions of collective bargaining agreements where applicable. A full overview of your compensation package, including any relevant collective bargaining agreement details applicable to your role based on your employment location and Novartis employer entity, will be communicated separately to you during the application process.

We build and buy software that touches clinical trials, patient safety, manufacturing, quality systems and commercial operations. It now ships weekly rather than yearly, is increasingly AI-assisted, and increasingly contains AI. Our control framework was built for a slower world.

This role makes secure, compliant, audit-ready software delivery the fastest path for engineers - not a gate they route around. You will own the enterprise SDLC governance model and build much of it yourself: policy as code, automated evidence capture, pipeline controls and reference architectures.

This is a hands-on, individual-contributor leadership role. You will set enterprise direction, influence hundreds of engineers and lead through a federated community - but you will not have a large direct team, and you will spend meaningful time in repositories, pipelines and control code. Candidates seeking pure oversight or people management should not apply.

Location: Barcelona, Spain

• Own the enterprise policy, standards and controls for software engineering, including source control, branching, peer review, testing, release management, environment segregation, change control, configuration and release documentation.
• Rationalise overlapping GxP, SOX, privacy, security and IT-quality requirements into one coherent, risk-based framework, ensuring low-risk internal tools are not governed like regulated clinical systems.
• Retire SDLC controls that do not reduce risk and ensure tooling is implemented to securely speed up software development at Novartis at the highest scale, leveraging and creating AI tooling for the enterprise.
• Implement policy as code and controls as code, including branch protections, mandatory review, signed commits, segregation of duties, deployment approvals and immutable audit trails.
• Build automated, continuous evidence pipelines and define control telemetry including coverage, exceptions, drift, mean time to remediate and control effectiveness, with a focus on agility, automation and speed.
• Own secure-by-default guardrails in golden pipelines and paved-road platforms, aligning with recognized frameworks including NIST SSDF, ISO/IEC 27001 and IEC 62304 where applicable.
• Define controls for AI-assisted engineering, including acceptable use of coding assistants, agentic tooling, IP and licence exposure, provenance, attribution and human accountability for review and approval.
• Define controls for AI-containing products, including model lifecycle, dataset and model documentation, evaluation, drift monitoring, explainability, human oversight and readiness for evolving regulatory requirements.
• Use AI to reduce compliance burden through automated risk assessment drafting, control mapping, test generation, deviation triage and documentation synthesis, while serving as technical authority for inspections, audits, certifications and SDLC remediation.
• Lead a federated community of engineering, quality, security and compliance practitioners, publish practical guidance, advise senior leaders on risk and trade-offs, and partner with software developers across the enterprise to enable efficient delivery of compliant and secure products.

At Novartis, we're committed to reimagining medicine together - and rewarding the people who make it happen.

Business Acumen, Influencing Skills, Information Security Risk Management, IT Governance, Stakeholder Management, Strategic Leadership, Talent Development