Senior Counsel, Life Sciences

Overview

This role anchors the organization’s legal contracting function in the United States. The position involves leading sophisticated transactions across software, data, and services businesses, including biosimulation software licensing, hosted and SaaS offerings, data licensing and consortium arrangements, and regulatory and scientific services engagements.

The work includes building a scalable contracting model supported by clear playbooks, disciplined templates, and appropriate self-service, while providing strong legal judgment and practical risk guidance.

Responsibilities

• Lead drafting, review, and negotiation of complex agreements, including:
  • Master services agreements
  • Commercial and service agreements
  • SaaS and software license agreements
  • Data privacy agreements and DPAs
  • Vendor and consulting agreements
  • Reseller agreements
  • Development/developer agreements and related amendments
• Serve as the senior Legal escalation point for proposed revisions that introduce legal terms or complex commercial terms, including revisions to evaluation agreements.
• Translate legal risk into clear, practical options for Sales, Finance, Commercial Operations, Privacy, Security, and business leaders to enable timely decisions while protecting the organization.
• Own or materially contribute to contract playbooks, clause positions, fallback language, approval thresholds, and negotiation guidance for life sciences and technology transactions.
• Own the legal content and guardrails of order-form and task-order templates, enabling controlled self-service while ensuring revisions introducing legal or complex commercial terms are escalated to Legal.
• Negotiate provisions that drive life sciences technology transactions, including:
  • Intellectual property allocation
  • License scope
  • Data rights and permitted use
  • Derived data and model outputs
  • Limitation of liability
  • Indemnity
  • Confidentiality
  • Publication rights
  • Warranties
  • Service levels
  • Privacy and security
  • Validated-system and GxP obligations
• Negotiate data licensing, consortium, collaboration, and development arrangements, including multi-party participation agreements and data contribution, use, output, and publication terms.
• Partner with Commercial Operations, which populates and executes order forms and task orders within Legal-approved templates.
• Help lead an alternative legal talent/provider program, including quality standards, resourcing, metrics, and continuous improvement.
• Mentor more junior attorneys and contract resources and provide consistent escalation support across regions.
• Monitor contracting trends and operational measures to reduce cycle time, improve consistency, and identify opportunities for templates and controlled self-service.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (or equivalent law degree) and active membership in good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• Five or more years of combined law firm and in-house experience, with a substantial majority focused on commercial contracting and meaningful in-house experience supporting a revenue-generating commercial function.
• Substantial experience supporting life sciences, pharmaceutical, biotech, health technology, software, data, or professional-services businesses.
• Demonstrated strength drafting and negotiating complex MSAs, services agreements, SaaS/software licenses, privacy and data-processing terms, and related commercial agreements from the vendor/provider perspective.
• Working knowledge of privacy and regulated-data issues relevant to life sciences and technology transactions; familiarity with HIPAA and GDPR is strongly preferred.
• Ability to operate with limited supervision, prioritize a high-volume portfolio, and make sound risk-based decisions.
• Clear, concise communication and credibility to advise senior business and legal stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with contract playbooks, template libraries, approval thresholds, process design, or alternative legal service providers is strongly preferred.

Compensation & Benefits

• Not specified in the provided job description.

Location

• United States.