Metadata Standards & Governance Lead - Pharma

Metadata Standards & Governance Lead - Pharma

Based either in Frankfurt or Baden WürttembergGermany

Hybrid - 2–3 days on site

Salary range: €127-167k total package (depending on skills and experience levels)

Most metadata and governance roles hand you a rulebook someone else wrote and ask you to police it. This one hands you a blank page.

You'd be joining a global, research-driven pharmaceutical company in the middle of a serious investment in AI across its Medicine organisation. The ambition is real and already funded: a trial simulator that makes study planning faster and cheaper, AI-supported risk-based quality management, and further out, generating parts of a trial protocol straight from governed data. All of it rests on data that's clean, consistently defined and trusted. Right now, that foundation doesn't exist yet.

What you'd actually own

You'd be the central decision-maker for Medicine-level metadata. What has to exist, who's accountable for it, and how disagreements over definitions and standards get settled. You'd design the governance model, run a federated operating rhythm so data-owning functions co-own standards rather than have them dropped on them, and guide the metadata repository build alongside vendors you're expected to challenge, not just manage.

No direct reports, but a clear mandate from senior leadership to make binding calls and hold the line when people would rather not change.

Greenfield Work In a New Team

You'd be one of several senior hires forming a brand-new team, so you get a genuine say in how it works, what it values and who joins it. Most people inherit a culture; you'd help write this one.

The scope grows with your results. The current focus is clinical trials, particularly Phase 1-IV, but the remit is expected to widen into quality, pharmacovigilance, regulatory affairs and earlier-stage research as the function proves itself. The standards you set in the next 12-24 months are intended to become the reference model for how the whole organisation handles data. That's a legacy, not a job spec.

You'd work with modern tooling - Collibra for metadata, semantic-layer platforms like Snowflake and Databricks, rather than fighting legacy systems.

And the company itself takes a long view. Privately held and no quarterly-earnings panic. Decisions here are won by persuasion and evidence rather than issued from above, which means your influence has to be earned, but once it's earned it genuinely counts.

Who this suits

You've led metadata management, governance and standards work inside a complex life sciences organisation, and you've made federated models actually function rather than just exist on a slide. You're comfortable with senior stakeholders and you can turn policy into something teams can use on a Monday morning.

Clinical data standards, GxP, CDISC or SDTM experience is a real advantage. It isn't a hard requirement. If your governance credentials come from another regulated, data-heavy environment and you learn fast, you're worth talking to.

The playbook isn't written, the stakeholder map is still shifting, and priorities can move quickly. If that sounds like chaos, this isn't for you. If it sounds like room to define a discipline instead of inheriting one, let's talk.

Hit apply to find out more.