Contracting Operations Manager

This is what you will do

This role will lead the establishment and continuous improvement of a centralized Contracts Operations function within Legal, supporting Chiesi USA's matrix/shared-services operating model. The Contracts Operations Lead will be the single point of contact for day-to-day contracting needs across the US business, owning intake, triage, orchestration, and continuous improvement of end-to-end contract operations. This is both a hands-on and build-from-scratch role, with a near-term scope of managing all of the company’s contracting operations, ensuring consistency, clarity, and coordination of a core competency for the organization.

You’ll be responsible for:

Contracting: 

• Act as the single point of contact for all US contract requests, establishing a shared intake channel, classifying requests, and orchestrating the end-to-end workflow. 
• Establish detailed knowledge of and demonstrates control over internal processes and systems for the management, review and approval of all contracts with third parties.
• Review (and manage review from internal stakeholders) and negotiate contracts to effectively and efficiently achieve the business objective.
• Draft, negotiate, review and coordinate approval for all ordinary course of business contracts such as confidentiality agreements, master service agreements, speaker agreements, consulting agreements, etc.
• Work with internal stakeholders to deliver bespoke amendments to account for revised needs.
• Manage the company’s library of templates to ensure templates meet the needs of the business and are routinely updated to reflect market provisions.
• Develop and maintain a "fallback playbook" with approved clause positions, deviation matrices, and escalation paths for common contract terms.

Contract Process Design and Management: 

• Evaluate, re-design, and/or improve the company’s contracting standard operating procedures to account for the new contract operations function and the current contract lifecycle management tool.
• Routinely solicit feedback from internal stakeholders to continuously improve contract processing and user experience.
• Adapt contract process to account for changes in the business, acquisitions and new systems.

Contract Lifecycle Management: 

• Serve as the primary administrator and subject-matter expert for the contract lifecycle management system.
• Lead implementation and launch of new contract lifecycle management system.
• Organize and lead administrator trainings for legal, compliance and procurement teams.
• Organize and lead user trainings for all relevant internal stakeholders. 
• Routinely solicit feedback from internal stakeholders to continuously improve functionality of contract lifecycle management system and user experience.
• Work with vendor and global and local IT teams to ensure functionality of contract lifecycle management system is fit for purpose to the US organization.
• Manage contract storage and organization, including by working with internal stakeholders to monitor contract terms and/or the need for terminations and renewals/extensions.

Contract Operations Leadership and Build Out: 

• Lead contract operations function from inception to deployment.
• Identify bottlenecks and propose process, tooling, and policy improvements; present options and decisions to the cross-functional steering group.
• Build the business case to expand to an operations team; onboard and lead future Operations Managers; coordinate with paralegal support..
• Establish service level agreements and develop dashboards/reports to provide visibility into contract operations performance. 
• Improve repository governance (naming conventions, metadata completeness, searchability) and reduce expired/duplicate/fragmented agreements.

You will need to have

• Bachelor’s Degree
• Proven success designing and running end-to-end contracting processes in a matrix environment; strong project/program management skills
• Deep working knowledge of common biopharma contract types (MSAs/SOWs, HCP agreements/consulting, NDAs, marketing vendors, SaaS/tech) and related risk controls
• CLM expertise at an administrator/configurator level (preferably with Sirion or similar): workflow design, clause library, templates, metadata, DocuSign integration, user provisioning, and reporting
• Strong data orientation; ability to define SLAs and build dashboards (Excel/Power BI/Tableau; basic SQL a plus)
• Experience managing and leading others required
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills; able to translate legal/compliance needs into clear processes and enablement materials
• Excellent organizational skills
• Ability to operate effectively in a fast-paced environment and meet aggressive deadlines
• Demonstration of discretion and ability to maintain confidential information
• Ability to focus and multi-task
• Ability to work with minimal day-to-day supervision and to work closely with legal and business personnel at all levels

We would prefer for you to have

• Five+ years of contract negotiation, process and lifecycle management
• Paralegal certification and/or Lean/Six Sigma credentials

Location

Hybrid position in Cary, NC office.