R&D Senior Product Owner Data Governance and Semantics

Location: Europe — hybrid or remote

Salary: €59,000–€74,000 annually for roles located in Italy; compensation in other countries follows the applicable local market and internal frameworks.

Company

Chiesi is an international research-focused pharmaceutical and healthcare group operating in 31 countries with more than 7,000 employees.

What you will do

• Lead the semantic layer, data models, ontologies, metadata definitions, business glossaries, and knowledge graph for the R&D data ecosystem, with a focus on clinical data.
• Develop and implement the R&D data governance framework, including stewardship roles, ownership standards, policies, and FAIR and ALCOA+ principles.
• Own data products by defining requirements, prioritizing features, managing the backlog, and overseeing pipeline and schema changes with engineering teams.
• Establish data quality frameworks, validation rules, quality metrics, profiling, anomaly detection, and automated monitoring.
• Track product and governance KPIs and continuously improve policies, processes, and tools.
• Engage scientists, functional SMEs, GICT, and executives while balancing technical and business priorities.

Requirements

• Master’s or PhD in Life Sciences, Data Science, or a related field.
• At least 5 years of experience in an R&D clinical domain and hands-on experience designing solutions in complex R&D environments.
• At least 3 years of experience as a Product Owner or in a similar strategic role, managing product backlogs and roadmaps.
• Strong data modeling expertise and experience with pharmaceutical R&D or Life Sciences data flows and regulatory requirements.
• Experience with graph databases, semantic and ontology platforms such as Neo4j and Snowflake, metadata and governance tools such as Informatica, and data quality management.
• Fluent English required. Strong analytical, communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills are also required.

Nice to have

• Experience in clinical, safety, or CMC data domains.
• Experience promoting data-driven culture and influencing without formal authority.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid and remote working options within Europe.
• Annual bonus scheme based on company and individual performance.
• Pension, private medical insurance, wellbeing programme, and flexible benefits programme.
• Continuous training, learning, and development opportunities.
• Support with relocation, tax assistance for foreign colleagues, and work-life balance initiatives.