Design Governance Lead

Takeda Pharma AG seeks a Design Governance Lead in Zürich to establish and maintain global design governance frameworks for engineering and CAPEX decisions, ensuring quality, risk reduction, and successful project delivery.

The company is looking for a professional to oversee and strengthen its worldwide design governance structure for engineering and capital expenditure choices. This position ensures that design decisions meet high standards from initial investment stages through Front-End Engineering Design, fostering innovation while minimizing risks and supporting effective project outcomes across the global engineering portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Create, roll out, and refine the global Design Assurance & Review framework to guide early investment and FEED choices.
• Set clear standards for design decisions, covering evidence needs, documentation, approval rules, and decision tracking.
• Guarantee uniform application of design governance across international projects, regions, and delivery methods, including work with internal and external engineering partners.
• Protect early investment decision quality by ensuring thorough option evaluation, clear risk assessment, and documented assumptions.
• Manage design decision records, assumptions, deviations, and logs to maintain full auditability throughout the project lifecycle.
• Safeguard approved design baselines by handling formal deviation processes and stopping undocumented scope or design changes.
• Collaborate with Design Delivery, Finance, Quality, Project Sponsors, and external engineering groups to align governance with investment choices and project execution.
• Lead ongoing improvements in design governance practices while encouraging knowledge sharing and engineering excellence globally.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Chemical, Mechanical, Process, Industrial or related discipline).
• Significant experience leading engineering, FEED, design assurance, or engineering governance activities within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or highly regulated industries.
• Strong understanding of CAPEX project development, engineering governance, and investment decision-making processes.
• Experience working across global organizations and collaborating with diverse, cross-functional, and geographically distributed teams.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills with the ability to simplify complex technical challenges for senior stakeholders.
• Strong stakeholder management, influencing, and communication skills, with the confidence to challenge constructively and uphold governance standards.
• Demonstrated leadership in driving organizational change, fostering collaboration, developing people, and building engagement across multidisciplinary teams.
• High integrity, sound judgment, resilience, and a continuous improvement mindset, with a passion for innovation and engineering excellence.

Nice to have

• Master's or PhD in Engineering.