Senior Counsel, Life Sciences

Certara; Radnor (Delaware County); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Certara in the United States seeks a pragmatic commercial attorney to anchor the contracting function across software, data, and services. You will lead drafting, reviewing, and negotiating complex MSAs, SaaS licenses, and data agreements, and will serve as the senior escalation point for high‑risk terms.

This hands‑on role requires advising Sales, Finance, and operations, building playbooks and templates, and mentoring junior lawyers.

Qualifications

• Juris Doctor and active bar membership in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• 5+ years combined law firm and in-house commercial contracting experience.
• Significant background supporting life sciences, software, data, or professional services businesses.
• Extensive experience drafting MSAs, services agreements, SaaS licenses, privacy terms.
• Familiarity with HIPAA and GDPR preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead drafting, review, and negotiation of MSAs, SaaS, data licenses, and related agreements.
• Escalate and resolve complex terms as senior legal point of contact.
• Translate risk into practical options for Sales, Finance, and operations.
• Develop and maintain contract playbooks, templates, and approval thresholds.
• Guardrails for order-form templates and self-service while escalating revisions.
• Negotiate IP allocation, data rights, liability, indemnity, confidentiality, and security terms.
• Oversee multi-party data licensing, consortium, and publication terms.
• Mentor junior attorneys and contract resources; support regional teams.
• Monitor trends to reduce cycle time and improve consistency.

Skills

Commercial contracting

MSA drafting & negotiation

SaaS & software licenses

Data privacy agreements

HIPAA/GDPR familiarity

Contract playbooks & templates

Vendor/consulting agreements

Regulatory services agreements

Mentoring junior attorneys

Education

Juris Doctor (JD)

Job description

Overview

Certara accelerates the potential of bringing medicines to market and to patients using biosimulation software, technology, and services to transform traditional drug discovery and development. Our clients include more than 2,400 biopharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and regulatory agencies across 70 countries. Our goal is to enable the life sciences industry's use of data, modeling, and analytics to make better decisions across the various phases of discovery and drug development. Our software and scientists incorporate modern advances in scientific understanding, drug development experience, data analysis, and AI resulting in significant opportunities to decrease the cost and increase the probability of success for new drug approval and commercialization.

Responsibilities

We are seeking a pragmatic, experienced commercial attorney to anchor our legal contracting function in the United States. You will lead sophisticated transactions across Certara's software, data, and services businesses, including biosimulation software licensing, hosted and SaaS offerings, data licensing and consortium arrangements, and regulatory and scientific services engagements, and help build a scalable contracting model grounded in strong legal judgment, clear playbooks, disciplined templates, and appropriate self-service. This is a hands-on role for an attorney who can independently manage complex negotiations while also improving how contracting work gets done. You will own legal terms and the contracting framework. Commercial Operations will continue to populate and execute order forms and task orders within Legal-approved templates.

• Lead the drafting, review, and negotiation of complex 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; enable timely decisions while protecting the company.
• 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 that revisions introducing legal or complex commercial terms are escalated to Legal.
• Negotiate the 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, and 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 remains responsible for populating and executing order forms and task orders within Legal-approved templates.
• Help lead the 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 appropriate opportunities for templates and controlled self-service.

Qualifications

• 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.
• Experience with contract playbooks, template libraries, approval thresholds, process design, or alternative legal service providers is strongly preferred.
• Clear, concise communication and the credibility to advise senior business and legal stakeholders.

How success will be measured

• Commercial agreements are negotiated efficiently and consistently within approved risk parameters.
• Legal escalations are resolved promptly, with clear ownership and decision records.
• Template usage, playbook consistency, escalation quality, and approval discipline improve.
• More routine work moves safely through controlled templates and self-service without eroding Legal's ownership of legal terms.
• Stakeholders experience Legal as responsive, pragmatic, and commercially enabling.

Certara bases all employment-related decision on merit, taking into consideration qualifications, skills, achievement, and performance. We treat all applicants and employees without regard to personal characteristics such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, nationality, marital status, pregnancy, physical or mental condition, genetic information, military service, or other characteristic protected by law.