can one grant references to role?

In our environment all developers accounts have the role 'Developer', this role has all the necessary permissions to do what they need to do bar one which seems crazy. 

In order for DEV1 to issue an ‘alter table add constraint ‘ on OWNER_X.TABLE_X OWNER_X needs to grant references to DEV 1 for TABLE_X – this really needs to be sorted out as it compromises security configuration/automation and becomes prone to error.

Fully patched OCI DBaaS 19c enterproce edition