Merck KGaA Posted August 15, 2026

Solution Lead - Study Design Platform

Mollet del Valles, Barcelona, Spain FULL_TIME
Information Technology

Merck KGaA is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

Work Your Magic with us!

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you’ve got big plans – so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people’s lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

Your Role:  Clinical trials are at the heart of bringing new therapies to patients, and the decisions made in early study design have a lasting impact on their success. As Solution Lead for the Study Design Platform, you will own the end-to-end delivery and continuous evolution of a next-generation Software as a Service platform that enables smarter, data-driven decisions in clinical study planning, protocol authoring, and scenario-based operational feasibility analysis. You will join the Digital, Data & IT (DDIT) R&D team within our Healthcare sector, working at the intersection of clinical operations, digital innovation, and enterprise IT.

During the implementation phase, you will act as the critical bridge between R&D business stakeholders, the IT team, and the software vendor. You will lead solution design activities, translate complex business requirements into clear functional specifications and process flows, support User Acceptance Testing (UAT), facilitate alignment workshops, and drive change management and user onboarding to ensure a successful platform rollout.

Beyond go-live, you will take ownership of lifecycle management: prioritizing enhancements, supporting releases, monitoring solution performance, and ensuring sustainable adoption and business value realization. Working across a global matrix organization, you will collaborate closely with R&D users, IT partners, and the software provider, and may also contribute your analytical expertise to broader digital R&D initiatives in the clinical trial space.

This position is based in Spain, preferably Barcelona or Madrid, but other locations in Spain may also be considered.

Who You Are

You hold a Master's degree in life sciences, computer science, or a related field, or bring equivalent professional experience.

You have 5 or more years of experience as an IT Solution Lead, Application Lead, or in a comparable role within the healthcare or life sciences industry.

You bring in-depth knowledge of clinical trial processes, including protocol design, operational planning (country and site selection), and study conduct.

You have a proven track record of translating complex business needs into functional specifications and communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

You have hands-on experience contributing to IT solution delivery in regulated environments, with a solid understanding of software development lifecycles and computerized system validation (CSV) in line with GxP requirements.

You are familiar with clinical trial systems and clinical trial data standards, and can navigate a global matrix organization to build trusted relationships across R&D, IT, and external partners.

You are fluent in English (written and spoken) and bring a proactive, solution-oriented mindset, you take ownership, anticipate challenges, and drive issues through to resolution.

What we offer: We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe that this variety drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!

Apply now and become a part of a team that is dedicated to Sparking Discovery and Elevating Humanity!

Job details

Seniority
Not listed
Function
Information Technology
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Mollet del Valles, Barcelona, Spain
Employment type
FULL_TIME

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Information Technology role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 1211 comparable Information Technology roles across 60 biopharma companies.

1211Comparable roles tracked
1154Currently active
60Companies hiring similar roles
32Countries represented

Salary context

152 of 1211 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.

This roleSubject Not listed on this posting
Lowest disclosed · Senior Data Security Engineer (Insider Risk Management – Engineering) · AbbVie $0/hr – $0/hr (≈ $0–$0/yr)
Highest disclosed · Senior Director, Targets and Mechanisms Solutions · Pfizer $230,900/yr – $384,800/yr
Peer group range $0 – $307,850 (median $165,900)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 1211 comparable roles

India563
United States255
Spain115
Poland74
Portugal34
China22

+ 26 more countries

Seniority mix

665 of 1211 peers have a known seniority level

Senior308
Manager153
Principal56
Associate52
Associate Director44
Director35
Senior Director12
Intern/Fellow/Postdoc4
Executive/VP1

Therapeutic area mix

2 of 1211 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Oncology1
Vaccines & Infectious Disease1

Similar opportunities

The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.

40%similar
Roche Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain
Same function Same country
40%similar
Roche Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain Senior
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40%similar
Novartis Barcelona Gran Vía, Spain
Same function Same country
40%similar
Novartis Barcelona Gran Vía, Spain Associate Director
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40%similar
Novartis Barcelona Gran Vía, Spain Senior
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40%similar
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Notify me about similar jobs

Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.

How we calculate "similar"

No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.

Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.

40%
Lead Software Engineer (Rust)
Roche · Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Associate Director Business Analysis (GCO)
Novartis · Barcelona Gran Vía, Spain · Associate Director
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Associate Director, Enterprise Architect Network Security
Novartis · Barcelona Gran Vía, Spain · Associate Director
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Enterprise Security Architect – Data Security
Novartis · Barcelona Gran Vía, Spain · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.