Director, Science and Technology

Role Overview

• Provide early scientific and technical input to research teams—offering leadership and guidance on candidate selection, raising safety, efficacy, and developability concerns, and ensuring research decisions account for development needs to reduce risk and delays prior hand‑over to development.
• Enable portfolio oversight and cross-project knowledge flow by connecting learnings, identifying platform-level issues, and facilitating scientific exchange across projects and functions (drug substance, drug product and analytical development).
• Apply structured scientific thinking to critical technical questions (including root-cause analyses); define options and trade-offs, and provide clear recommendations to drive timely conclusions.
• Strengthen governance and decision-making at key development gates by applying scientific rigor, enterprise thinking, and a holistic portfolio perspective.
• Influence across Novartis and across sites to align diverse stakeholders (e.g., research, development, technical operations, regulatory, quality) and enable execution of the agreed scientific strategy.
• Coach and mentor teams and individuals by sharing experience and best practices, helping them build scientific capability and embed a consultative, collaborative way of working.
• Enable innovation for novel and complex modalities (e.g., conjugates/AOCs, bispecific antibodies, therapeutic proteins) by initiating early scientific exchange, benchmarking external advances, and translating insights into actionable guidance.
• Assess, escalate, and communicate critical risks with urgency, proposing mitigations and driving alignment while upholding scientific rigor and balanced judgment to influence outcomes and support implementation.
• Partner with SMEs to capture prior knowledge in referenceable documents that support risk assessments and improve the quality of regulatory submissions.
• Ensure that upcoming new formats or technology platforms from research are established timely in development to be ready for transfer and scaling of the technologies

Requirements

• Advanced degree (PhD preferred) in a relevant scientific discipline (e.g., biochemistry, chemistry, bioengineering, pharmaceutical sciences) with strong scientific credibility.
• Extensive experience (15 years desirable) across the full development spectrum—from early research‑originated projects to late development—enabling end‑to‑end thinking and risk‑based guidance.
• Cross-disciplinary breadth with deep expertise in at least one area; ability to connect analytical, drug substance, and drug product considerations.
• Strong internal and external network, with demonstrated ability to influence across a complex matrix with resilience and perseverance.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills; able to coach and mentor across levels and functions.
• Sound judgment and a strong sense of urgency for critical risks; able to escalate appropriately and drive balanced mitigations.
• Fluent English (written and spoken).