Agency Performance Lead: Governance, KPIs & Innovation

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited; Lexington (MA); On-site; USD 116,000 - 182,000; Full time

Job summary

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited in Lexington, MA is seeking an Agency Performance Lead to drive governance and optimization across agency, brand, and internal teams. This individual-contributor role reports to the Associate Director, Agency and Vendor Performance.

The position emphasizes developing standards, tools, and training to improve process adoption, and overseeing KPI tracking for quality, speed, efficiency, and cost. Strong communication and regulatory experience is essential.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.
• 5-7+ years of experience in pharmaceutical/biopharma/healthcare marketing, communications, advertising.
• Experience in commercial strategy, marketing operations, or agency management in the pharma or healthcare sector.
• Experience leading large agency ecosystems (content, media, digital).
• Direct experience working in regulated pharma environments.
• High accountability for quality, compliance, and cost efficiency.
• Ability to balance innovation with risk mitigation.
• Comfortable challenging agencies and internal teams.
• Skilled at navigating Medical and Commercial priorities.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of ensuring clarity and understanding across diverse markets and stakeholders.
• External stakeholder management, incl. agency performance governance, and KPI development.
• Financial and cost management acumen.
• Strong knowledge of procurement processes.
• Understanding of RFP design and contract negotiation partnership.

Responsibilities

• Oversee Agency Performance projects and workplans by coordinating stakeholders, tracking milestones, and ensuring timing commitments and deliverables are met.
• Develop agency performance standards, tools, playbooks, and training to build capability, improve process adoption, and promote consistent ways of working across agencies and brand teams.
• Manage agency KPIs across quality, speed, efficiency, cost, and other agreed measures. Identify trends, risks, and improvement opportunities, and coordinate actions with agencies and internal stakeholders.
• Coordinate governance activities, including performance reviews, issue and risk management, escalations, and action tracking. Strengthen collaboration and accountability across agencies and internal partners.
• Support pilots of new agency capabilities and ways of working, including modular content, AI-assisted production, and automation. Assess results and recommend opportunities to scale successful approaches.

Skills

Stakeholder management

KPI development

Communication skills

Regulatory knowledge

Budget/cost management

Procurement processes

RFP design

Contract negotiation

Education

Bachelor's degree

MBA or advanced degree preferred

Job description

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited in Lexington, MA is seeking an Agency Performance Lead to drive governance and optimization across agency, brand, and internal teams. This individual-contributor role reports to the Associate Director, Agency and Vendor Performance.

The position emphasizes developing standards, tools, and training to improve process adoption, and overseeing KPI tracking for quality, speed, efficiency, and cost. Strong communication and regulatory experience is essential.