About The Role

Job Description Summary

The Head of AWS Engineering is accountable for defining, building, and evolving Novartis' AWS-based cloud platforms and engineering capabilities, ensuring they deliver secure, scalable, compliant, and cost-effective services that accelerate business innovation. The role leads the engineering strategy, architecture realization, platform roadmap, and delivery of next-generation cloud capabilities while establishing engineering standards, automation, and operational excellence across the AWS ecosystem. Working closely with Architecture, Security, Operations, and Business stakeholders, the role ensures cloud platforms are engineered for resilience, regulatory compliance, financial accountability, and rapid adoption at enterprise scale.

Job Description

Key Accountabilities

Define and execute the AWS platform engineering strategy and roadmap, translating enterprise technology priorities and business requirements into a clear, multi-year plan for AWS platform capabilities, modernization, automation, resilience, security, compliance, and financial efficiency.Lead the end-to-end engineering and lifecycle management of AWS cloud platforms, ensuring services are securely designed, consistently engineered, scalable, highly available, resilient, observable, supportable, and fit for use across business-critical and regulated workloads.
Establish the operating model and engineering standards for the AWS ecosystem, including reusable platform patterns, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering, observability, automated testing, policy-as-code, and lifecycle management.
Own the AWS platform product roadmap and delivery portfolio, prioritizing platform investments, managing dependencies, balancing strategic and operational demand, and ensuring that committed capabilities are delivered on time, within agreed funding, and with measurable business outcomes.
Drive the modernization and simplification of the AWS environment, reducing technical debt, increasing automation, standardizing platform services, retiring obsolete capabilities, and accelerating adoption of cloud-native architecture and engineering practices.
Lead the development of AI-enabled cloud engineering capabilities, using AI, automation, AIOps, and intelligent developer tooling to improve engineering productivity, platform reliability, observability, incident prevention, operational efficiency, and speed of delivery.
Ensure security, regulatory compliance, and risk management are embedded throughout the platform lifecycle, partnering with Cybersecurity, Risk, Quality, Data Privacy, and Architecture teams to establish effective controls, maintain audit readiness, address vulnerabilities, and remediate risks within agreed timelines.
Own platform reliability, resilience, and service performance, establishing measurable service objectives for availability, capacity, performance, recoverability, incident reduction, operational health, and continuous improvement across the AWS platform portfolio. Provide leadership for cloud financial management and AWS cost optimization, ensuring transparency of consumption and cost, effective demand and capacity planning, appropriate cost allocation, resource efficiency, commitment management, and measurable FinOps outcomes.
Manage strategic relationships with AWS and other key technology partners, ensuring commercial agreements, engineering support, product roadmaps, service commitments, and innovation opportunities are aligned with enterprise priorities and deliver measurable value.
Build, lead, and develop a high-performing global AWS engineering organization, creating clear accountabilities, strengthening engineering capability, promoting inclusion and continuous learning, developing future leaders, and maintaining succession plans for critical roles and skills.Ensure effective deployment of internal and external engineering resources, aligning workforce capacity and specialist skills to strategic priorities while maintaining delivery quality, accountability, cost effectiveness, and appropriate ownership of critical platform knowledge.
Partner with enterprise architects, security leaders, operations teams, application teams, data and AI teams, Finance, Procurement, and business stakeholders, ensuring AWS capabilities are aligned with enterprise standards and enable faster, safer, and more efficient technology adoption.
Lead major AWS transformation programs and strategic initiatives, providing direction across complex cross-functional deliveries, resolving constraints and dependencies, managing risks, and ensuring platform changes translate into sustainable operational and business outcomes. Establish performance measures and governance mechanisms for the AWS engineering function, using data and transparent reporting to track roadmap execution, platform adoption, reliability, security, cost efficiency, engineering productivity, talent development, and stakeholder outcomes.

Essential Requirement

1 5+ years of progressive experience in cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, and enterprise technology operations, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.
Proven experience designing, building, and operating large-scale AWS environments leveraging services with latest AI Services and capabilities such as Bedrock, SMUS, AgentCore
Demonstrated success leading global cloud engineering teams and managing geographically distributed internal and external resources.
Strong experience driving cloud transformation, platform modernization, DevOps adoption, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/CloudFormation), and SRE practices within large enterprises.
Proven track record of delivering complex cloud programs and strategic initiatives while balancing business priorities, risk, cost, quality, and operational excellence.
Experience establishing cloud governance, security, compliance, risk management, and operational frameworks in regulated environments.
Hands-on experience implementing automation, observability, AIOps, and AI-enabled engineering solutions to improve platform reliability, productivity, and service delivery.
Strong stakeholder management experience with the ability to influence senior technology leaders, architects, business partners, vendors, and executive leadership teams to achieve strategic outcomes.

Desirable Requirement

Good written, presentation and verbal communication skills
Languages: Fluent in English (written & spoken), additional languages a plus

You’ll receive: You can find everything you need to know about our benefits and rewards in the Novartis Life Handbook. https://www.novartis.com/careers/benefits-rewards

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.

Join our Novartis Network : If this role is not suitable to your experience or career goals but you wish to stay connected to hear more about Novartis and our career opportunities, join the Novartis Network here:

https://talentnetwork.novartis.com/network

Skills Desired

Business Acumen, Change Management, Digital Capabilities, IT Governance, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management, Strategic Leadership, System Integration, Talent Development, Vendor Management