Associate Director, Business Process Excellence

Salary Range: €63,600.00 - €118,000.00. Band Level 5. Job Description Summary. Role Type: Hybrid working, #LI-Hybrid. Location: Barcelona, Spain. Relocation Support: This role is based in Barcelona, Spain. Novartis is unable to offer relocation support: please only apply if accessible.

What if you could redesign how medicines move through Development and help innovative treatments reach patients faster? As Associate Director, Business Process Excellence, you will lead high-impact transformation across the end-to-end drug-development value chain. You will partner with senior leaders and cross-functional teams to challenge existing assumptions, simplify complex processes, and design future-ready ways of working. Using zero-based redesign, Lean, Agile, data, digital, and AI-enabled approaches, you will turn strategic priorities into measurable improvements in cycle time, productivity, quality, compliance, and organizational effectiveness.

Job Description Key Responsibilities

• Lead enterprise-level process transformation across the drug-development value chain, from problem definition through future-state design, implementation, adoption, and value realization.
• Apply zero-based redesign to challenge legacy assumptions, eliminate unnecessary complexity, and reimagine processes around business and patient outcomes.
• Shape AI-enabled future-state processes and operating models by identifying where work can be simplified, automated, augmented, or fundamentally redesigned.
• Translate data and process insight into action by diagnosing bottlenecks, handoffs, decision delays, process variation, and adoption barriers.
• Build compelling transformation cases with clear problem statements, outcome measures, implementation considerations, and expected business value.
• Facilitate high-impact working sessions that enable cross-functional teams and leaders to make decisions, resolve complex challenges, and align around a practical future state.
• Partner with process owners, business leaders, technology teams, and change leads to convert redesigned processes into sustainable ways of working.
• Establish outcome measures and track value realization, ensuring that transformation delivers meaningful improvements in speed, productivity, quality, compliance, and user experience.
• Strengthen organizational capability by coaching teams in process excellence, structured problem-solving, zero-based redesign, and continuous improvement.
• Act as a trusted transformation partner who constructively challenges the status quo and influences decisions without relying on formal authority.

Essential Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences, Pharmacy, Engineering, Biotechnology, Business, or another relevant discipline.
• Significant experience in Business Process Excellence, Operational Excellence, enterprise transformation, process re-engineering, or management consulting.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical Development, supported by experience in one or more areas such as Clinical Development, Regulatory Affairs, Pharmaceutical R&D, Technical Development, or Manufacturing.
• Demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional transformation from diagnosis and design through implementation and measurable business impact.
• Practical expertise in process redesign and transformation methodologies such as Lean, Lean Six Sigma, Agile, Value Stream Mapping, Business Process Management, or zero-based redesign.
• Ability to use qualitative and quantitative evidence to identify root causes, evaluate opportunities, and develop decision-ready recommendations.
• Strong facilitation, stakeholder engagement, change leadership, and executive communication capabilities.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, connect strategic priorities to operational processes, and influence across organizational boundaries.

Desirable Requirements

• Advanced degree such as Master of Business Administration, Master of Science, Doctor of Philosophy, or Doctor of Pharmacy.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt or Master Black Belt certification.
• Agile, Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework, Project Management Professional, or Change Management certification.
• Experience in digital transformation, process automation, artificial intelligence adoption, and data-driven decision making.

Salary Range: €63,600 to €118,000

Why Novartis?

Our purpose is to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives and our vision is to become the most valued and trusted medicines company in the world. With our people, it is our associates that drive us each day to reach our ambitions.

Learn more here:

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams representative of the patients and communities we serve.

Skills Desired

• Clinical Research
• Drug Development
• Financial Management
• Microsoft Project
• Program Management
• Project Delivery
• Project Planning
• Resource Allocation
• Risk Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Waterfall Model

Improving the lives of people living with disease takes more than innovative science. It takes a focus on the needs of people and a community committed to meeting them. It takes a team of people like you. Working together. Learning together. Thriving together.