Product Manager - Quality and Regulatory Systems

Life Scientific; Dublin; Hybrid; EUR 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Life Scientific in Dublin (Hybrid) is seeking a Product Manager for Quality and Regulatory Systems. You will own the product vision, roadmap, and performance metrics across regulatory tech, partnering with CRO and cross-functional teams to translate needs into clear specifications for engineers.

You will challenge current ways of working, drive adoption of new tools, and shape a new function at the intersection of business and engineering on the Transformation team.

Qualifications

• 4–5 years of product management experience in a startup environment.
• Able to translate ambiguous business problems into structured specs for engineering.
• Strong ability to connect with technical teams and drive with influence.

Responsibilities

• Define a coherent product vision and technology roadmap for Quality and regulatory.
• Question existing processes and reimagine regulatory planning, delivery, and submissions.
• Lead adoption of new tools and ways of working with empathy and influence.
• Define core performance metrics and build reporting for data-informed decisions.
• Partner with CRO, regulatory leads, and cross-functional teams to translate needs into clear requirements.
• Deliver technology solutions with IT/Engineering, manage dependencies and risks.

Skills

Product management

Startup mindset

Systems & process thinking

Ambiguity handling

Influence without authority

Regulatory/quality domain awareness

Tools

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Product Manager – Quality and Regulatory Systems

Life Scientific | Dublin (Hybrid)

About Life Scientific

Life Scientific is a science company operating at the heart of a $250 billion global crop protection market.

Founded in 1996 on the campus of University College Dublin, we've spent almost thirty years mastering a model that few others in the industry have taken on: Reverse engineering off-patent crop protection products - molecule for molecule - and getting them registered fast, across Europe and beyond.

We operate across 16+ countries, with close to 130 people spread across 12 specialist divisions and a portfolio of 99+ active ingredients. Led by CEO Nicola Mitchell, we combine the pace of a scale-up with real scientific depth.

We've set ourselves an ambitious marker: €1 billion in revenue, with a team of just 150 people. Getting there means our regulatory function - one of the most complex and consequential parts of the business - has to move faster and leverage smarter, without ever compromising on quality.

That's where this role comes in.

The Opportunity

The industry behind every quality and regulatory software system has not changed in thirty years. The same handful of systems from the same handful of names, a little more polished, a lot less new. Sameness for so long that no one calls it a choice.

We want to make a new choice. We believe that the data belongs to the minds that make it, and our job is to put it back in their hands.

So we create for the person, not the process. For the scientist, not the system. For the sharpest minds in the field, who have spent their careers working around their software instead of the other way around. Your job is to create what sets them loose: to let them reason with their data, interrogate it, and act on it in ways the industry has never allowed.

This is a newly created role at the intersection of business and engineering on our Transformation team. You will report to our VP of Transformation and Applied AI, with a dotted line to our Chief Regulatory Officer, and you will own the product vision, the roadmap, and the performance metrics for how we build the next generation of quality and regulatory technology.

Your mandate has two parts. The first is to translate real business problems into clear, well-scoped specifications that our engineers can build or source against. The second, and no less important, is to be the constructive contrarian: to question how the regulatory team operates and thinks, to surface the assumptions nobody has examined in years, and to find the bottlenecks hiding in plain sight.

You are the one who will shape and build what does not exist yet

This Role Is For You If

• You're energised by ambiguity, not paralysed by it - you'd rather find the shape of a problem than wait for someone to hand it to you
• You can operate as an individual contributor and lead through influence, not authority - building trust with domain experts who've been doing this far longer than you have
• You're naturally a constructive challenger - you ask "why do we do it this way?" without being told to, and you're comfortable being the person in the room who pushes back
• You think in systems and process, not in domain trivia - you don't need to know regulatory affairs to see where the friction lives
• You can translate messy, ambiguous business problems into specs an engineering team can actually build against
• You're a lateral thinker who connects dots other people don't - and you'd rather prototype a quick win than write a three-year plan nobody will read

What You'll Do

Vision & Roadmap

• Define and maintain a coherent product vision and technology roadmap across Quality and regulatory – aligned to company strategy and CRO objectives

Challenge & Reimagine

• Actively question current ways of working, challenge assumptions, and reimagine how regulatory work is planned, delivered, and submitted at Life Scientific

Adoption & Change Leadership

• Build confidence and capability in new tools and new ways of working; meet people where they are and make adoption stick
• Lead through influence and empathy, treat change as a people problem first, and turn early sceptics into champions

Metrics & Performance

• Define, own, and track the core performance metrics across the regulatory product estate; set baselines and targets with owners, build reporting, and drive data-informed decisions

Stakeholder Management

• Partner with the CRO, regulatory leads, and cross-functional teams (Regulatory, IT/engineering, and Transformation) to translate needs into clear, well-scoped requirements

Execution & Delivery

• Partner with IT/Engineering to deliver technology solutions - managing dependencies and risk, removing blockers, and maintaining delivery cadence

Tools & Enablement

• Drive the agenda on digital, data, and AI tooling that supports the regulatory function, and champion the capability-building that makes new ways of working feel like the team's own

Essential

What You Bring

• ~4–5 years of product management experience, ideally in a startup environment - you're a hands-on builder, not someone who relies on large support structures to get things done
• A lateral, creative, agile thinker who's comfortable operating without a playbook
• Strong ability to connect with a technical team, translate ambiguity into structured problems, and think several steps sideways as well as forwards
• The confidence to challenge and reframe an entire function's way of working - without needing deep domain expertise to do it

Desirable

• Experience in an adjacent regulated industry (e.g., software for regulated environments)
• External-facing product management experience - this is preferred over a purely internal-only PM background

No regulatory domain expertise required. What matters far more is a systems-and-process orientation, genuine intellectual curiosity, and the judgement to know which battles are worth fighting.

What Success Looks Like

First 30 Days

• You'll have built genuine working relationships across the regulatory team and its leads - investing the time to understand their objectives, current state, and the day-to-day realities of the work before proposing any change
• You'll be building domain literacy across regulatory affairs, regulatory science, and the team's ways of working
• You'll have started to map where regulatory ways of working could be rethought - surfacing assumptions, bottlenecks, and opportunities in partnership with the team, not ahead of it

30–60 Days

• You'll have delivered early quick wins that build momentum and credibility, lower the perceived cost of change, and build confidence in a new way of working
• You'll have established the core performance-metrics framework and baselined current performance with the owners

  60–90 Days

  • You'll have defined an initial product vision and draft roadmap across RIMS, regulatory document management, document submission, and the regulatory PDLC - aligned to our Building Greatness objectives
  • You'll be building deeper domain literacy across the regulatory lifecycle, and co-designing the adoption path that brings new tools and ways of working into everyday use

  Why Join Life Scientific

  Most companies bolt a PM onto regulatory as an afterthought.

  We're building the role from scratch - with real sponsorship, a genuine mandate to challenge, and a function that's ready for it.

  You won't be managing a team of engineers. You'll be doing something harder and more interesting: earning the trust of deep domain experts and helping them see that a new way of working is worth the change.

  And that matters.