Group Head - Int. Finance CoE

Posted Yesterday
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Hiring Remotely in Office, Machaze, Manica, MOZ
Remote
Expert/Leader
Biotech • Pharmaceutical
The Role
Lead the International Finance Center of Excellence to provide FP&A, strategic business partnering, resource allocation, and analytics capabilities. Drive budgeting, forecasting, KPI reporting, investment governance, automation and GenAI-enabled digital finance initiatives. Build and coach a global finance team, standardize processes, deliver self-service reporting, and partner with cross-functional stakeholders to support strategy execution and improve financial decision-making.
Summary Generated by Built In

Job Description Summary

About the role:
Position Summary
The Group Head, International Finance Center of Excellence (IC&M), leads a high-performing finance team providing strategic business planning, financial analytics and decision support to Head BPA of International Commercial & Medical organization (IC&M). The role serves as a key finance business partner to senior leadership, driving financial transparency, operational excellence, data-driven decision-making, and continuous process innovation across geographies.
This position is responsible for establishing best-in-class financial planning and analysis capabilities, delivering actionable insights, enabling resource allocation decisions, and advancing digital transformation initiatives that improve forecasting accuracy, efficiency, and business outcomes.


 

Job Description

Key Responsibilities

  • Strategic Business Partnership: Partner with International Commercial and Medical BPA team to support strategy execution and business priorities. Provide financial insights and recommendations to optimize investments, resource allocation, and profitability.
  • Act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders by translating complex financial information into actionable business decisions. Support long-range planning, annual strategic planning, and portfolio prioritization activities.
  • Financial Planning & Analysis: Support budgeting, forecasting, latest outlooks, strategic plans, and month-end reviews. Deliver comprehensive analyses of actuals versus plan, forecast, and prior year performance. Drive understanding of key business drivers, risks, opportunities, and performance trends.
  • Resource Allocation & Investment Governance: Drive resource allocation methodologies, prioritization frameworks, and investment optimization initiatives. Ensure alignment of resources with strategic priorities and expected business outcomes and monitor realization of financial benefits from approved investments.
  • Performance Management & Reporting: Establish standardized KPI frameworks and business performance dashboards. Provide insightful management reporting to leadership teams.
  • CoE Leadership & Capability Building: Lead, coach, and develop a diverse team of finance professionals and foster a culture of accountability, continuous learning, and innovation. Drive standardization, simplification, and harmonization of finance processes across markets. Build organizational capabilities in analytics, automation, and business partnering.
  • Data, Analytics & Digital Transformation: Champion automation and AI-enabled solutions to improve finance processes and decision support. Drive development of self-service reporting and advanced analytics capabilities.
  • Ensure high-quality master data governance and scalable reporting solutions. Leverage technologies such as Power BI, Power Query, Power Apps, GenAI, and digital finance tools to enhance productivity and insights.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate closely with Commercial, Medical, Operations, Finance, Data & Digital, and Global BPA teams. Align regional and local financial processes with global standards.
  • Support organizational transformation and change management initiatives. Facilitate knowledge sharing and best-practice adoption across the international organization.

Essential Requirements:

  • Professional qualification required (ACCA/CIMA/CPA/CA/MBA Finance, or equivalent).
  • 10-13 years of experience in FP&A, BPA, Finance Business Partnering, or Commercial Finance.
  • Proven leadership experience managing global or regional finance teams. Experience supporting Global functions within a complex multinational environment.
  • Strong track record in strategic planning, forecasting, performance management, and business partnering.
  • Strong knowledge of financial planning and reporting processes with expertise in Excel, Power BI, Power Query, and reporting technologies. Knowledge of SAP, BPC is a plus.
  • Experience with automation, digital finance solutions, and AI-enabled analytics. Strong understanding of resource allocation and investment governance methodologies.

Desirable Requirements:

  • Influence strategic decisions through data-driven financial insights.
  • Build a best-in-class BPA CoE delivering scalable and efficient finance services.
  • Drive operational excellence through standardization and automation.
  • Partner effectively with Commercial and Medical leaders to maximize business value.
  • Develop a highly engaged, high-performing finance organization that supports International growth and transformation.


 

Skills Desired

Capital Allocation, Critical Thinking, Data Visualization, Insight Generation, Managing Ambiguity, Market Understanding, Process Optimization

Skills Required

  • Professional qualification (ACCA, CIMA, CPA, CA, MBA Finance, or equivalent)
  • 10-13 years experience in FP&A, BPA, Finance Business Partnering, or Commercial Finance
  • Proven leadership experience managing global or regional finance teams
  • Experience supporting global functions within a complex multinational environment
  • Strong track record in strategic planning, forecasting, performance management, and business partnering
  • Expertise in Excel, Power BI, and Power Query (reporting technologies)
  • Experience with automation, digital finance solutions, and AI-enabled analytics (GenAI)
  • Knowledge of SAP and BPC
  • Experience driving resource allocation, investment governance, and performance reporting

Novartis Compensation & Benefits Highlights

The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Novartis and has not been reviewed or approved by Novartis.

  • Healthcare Strength Pay and benefits are described as a strong overall package, supported by medical, dental, and vision insurance alongside FSAs/HSAs and disability and life coverage. Mental-health support is reinforced through an employee assistance program with psychological support and a network of mental health first aiders.
  • Retirement Support Retirement support is positioned as a standout element, with an automatic company contribution plus dollar-for-dollar matching in the 401(k). Additional retirement funding is described through an age-based defined contribution program and access to an employee share purchase plan discount.
  • Parental & Family Support Family-related benefits are framed as robust, including a global minimum of paid parental leave for new parents following birth or adoption. Added supports include domestic partner coverage, dependent-care resources, and benefits such as adoption assistance and child/elder care options.

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The Company
HQ: Basel
110,000 Employees
Year Founded: 1996

What We Do

Novartis is an innovative medicines company. Every day, working to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives so that patients, healthcare professionals and societies are empowered in the face of serious disease. Our medicines reach more than 250 million people worldwide.

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