Global Governance & Engagement Compliance Officer

Job Summary

The Global Governance & Engagement Officer is responsible for driving the design, implementation, and ongoing enhancement of Werfen’s global corporate compliance framework. This role ensures strong alignment between ethics, culture, and operational accountability across the organization. It includes oversight of tone-from-the-top / middle, governance structures, culture assessments, policies and procedures, and board-level reporting, with the goal of reinforcing an ethical, compliant, and high-performance culture across all regions.

This role partners closely with senior leaders, compliance and legal teams, HR, and other key stakeholders globally. The Global Governance & Engagement Compliance Officer will define and manage key governance metrics, oversee risk assessments, ensure digital controls oversight, and promote consistency through training, recognition, and certification programs.

The position is based at Werfen’s global headquarters in Barcelona, Spain, reporting directly to the Chief Compliance Officer.

Key Accountabilities

• Tone from the Top / Middle : Promote leadership behaviors and communications that reinforce ethics, compliance, and accountability throughout the organization. Align leadership messaging globally.
• Ethics Integration : Embed ethics into decision-making, performance management, and leadership development processes. Partner with HR and Legal to ensure behavioral expectations are clear and reinforced.
• Culture Assessment : Lead initiatives to assess ethical culture, psychological safety, and trust levels across business units; analyze results and coordinate action plans with local and global leadership.
• Governance Structure : Define and maintain clear roles, responsibilities, and escalation pathways for governance bodies, risk owners, and functional leads across the enterprise.
• Policies & Procedures : Oversee the global policy framework, ensuring documents are consistent, current, accessible, and aligned with legal, ethical, and business requirements.
• Board Reporting : Prepare regular governance updates for the Audit and Control Committee of the Board of Directors and Executive Leadership Team; provide data, trends, and narratives to support informed decision-making.
• KPI Definition : Develop and monitor governance-related key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure program effectiveness, business impact, and progress toward strategic goals.
• Communication & Training : Collaborate with Compliance and HR to develop awareness campaigns, training content, and communication strategies tailored to governance priorities and regional needs.
• Recognition Programs : Design and implement recognition mechanisms that highlight and reward ethical leadership, integrity, and compliance contributions globally.
• Compliance Certification : Lead the global annual compliance certification process, ensuring clarity, accountability, and tracking of attestation across all functions and geographies.
• Risk Assessment : Conduct or coordinate enterprise-level risk assessments in areas related to governance, ethics, and compliance practices. Ensure emerging risks are captured and addressed.
• Digital Controls Oversight : Monitor and enhance systems and controls related to governance processes (e.g., automated tracking, certifications, policy distribution, training analytics, whistleblower systems).

Networking / Key relationships

Minimum Knowledge & Experience required for the position :

Skills & Capabilities :

Travel requirements :

Up to 30% domestic and international travel when required.

People Manager Core Competencies :

Building Talent

Planning and supporting the development of individuals’ knowledge, skills, and abilities so that they can fulfill current or future job responsibilities more effectively.

Customer Focus

Ensuring that the internal or external customer’s perspective is a driving force behind strategic priorities, business decisions, organizational processes, and individual activities; crafting and implementing service practices that meet customers’ and own organization’s needs; promoting and operationalizing customer service as a value.

Decision Making

Identifying and understanding problems and opportunities by gathering, analyzing, and interpreting quantitative and qualitative information; choosing the best course of action by establishing clear decision criteria, generating and evaluating alternatives, and making timely decisions; taking action that is consistent with available facts and constraints and optimizes probable consequences.

Driving for Results

Setting high goals for personal and group accomplishment; using measurement methods to monitor progress toward goals; tenaciously working to meet or exceed goals while deriving satisfaction from that achievement and continuous improvement.

Driving Innovation

Creating an environment (culture) that inspires people to generate novel solutions with measurable value for existing and potential customers (internal or external); encouraging experimentation with new ways to solve work problems and seize opportunities that result in unique and differentiated solutions.

Emotional Intelligence Essentials

Establishing and sustaining trusting relationships by accurately perceiving and interpreting own and others’ emotions and behavior; leveraging insights to effectively manage own responses so that one’s behavior matches one’s values and delivers intended results.

People Manager Accountabilities :

Effectively carries out the expectations of Werfen People Managers as defined in Werfen’s Role of the Manager program. Among others this includes maintaining regular, at minimum once a month, and transparent communication with the team through effective use of formal one-on-one meetings with direct reports and team meets. Managing performance issues and conflict proactively; uses judgement in consulting with department leadership and Human Resources. Responsibility for the team ́s compliance in terms of training, and fulfilment of their tasks and objectives as well as onboarding of new employees and development of the existing team.