The Role
Leads an international finance Center of Excellence supporting strategic planning, FP&A, forecasting, performance management, financial analytics, and business partnering. Manages global or regional finance teams, standardizes processes, develops KPI dashboards, and drives automation, AI-enabled analytics, data governance, and digital transformation using tools such as Power BI, Power Query, Power Apps, SAP, and BPC.
Summary Generated by Built In
Job Description Summary
About the role:The Group Head, International Finance Center of Excellence, leads a high-performing finance team providing strategic business planning, financial analytics and decision support to Head BPA of country. The role serves as a key finance business partner to BPA, CFO in 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 Requirements:
- Strategic Business Partnership: Partner with country BPA team to support strategy execution and business priorities. Provide financial insights and recommendations to optimize investments, resource allocation, and profitability.
- 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.
- 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 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 + 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.
- 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 OptimizationSkills Required
- Professional qualification such as ACCA, CIMA, CPA, CA, MBA Finance, or equivalent
- 10+ years of experience in FP&A, BPA, finance business partnering, or commercial finance
- Leadership experience managing global or regional finance teams
- Experience supporting global functions in a complex multinational environment
- Experience in strategic planning, forecasting, performance management, and business partnering
- Strong knowledge of financial planning and reporting processes
- Expertise in Excel, Power BI, Power Query, and reporting technologies
- Experience with automation, digital finance solutions, and AI-enabled analytics
- Understanding of resource allocation and investment governance methodologies
- Knowledge of SAP and BPC
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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.








