Senior CRO Contract Lead – Escalations & Negotiations

1001 Syneos Health, LLC; North Carolina; Hybrid; USD 68,000 - 115,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Company car

Health benefits (Medical, Dental and V

Job summary

Syneos Health is seeking a Sr. Site Contract Lead to manage CRO site contract escalations and guide negotiations, ensuring timely decisions and compliant guidance.

The role emphasizes alignment on templates, fallback language, and driven sponsorship decisions to enable CRO-led negotiations while maintaining control over high-risk exceptions. The successful candidate will build cross-functional partnerships with study teams, Legal, and Procurement, driving continuous improvement in negotiation

Responsibilities

• Serve as primary point of contact for CRO site contract escalations. Own the intake, triage, and resolution of escalations from CRO partners, ensuring timely decisions and clear guidance.
• Align on templates and approved fallback language with CRO partners. Partner with CROs and stakeholders to maintain fit-for-purpose templates, playbooks, and fallback positions that enable efficient first-pass negotiations.
• Enable CRO-led negotiation while owning sponsor-required exceptions. Set clear decision pathways so CROs negotiate the majority of agreements using their expertise and approved positions, while escalated cases receive consistent review and direction.
• Resolve complex legal and operational contracting issues. Assess proposed contract deviations, recommend acceptable alternatives, and provide clear feedback to CROs; escalation to Legal for guidance when required due to novel risk, policy questions, or non-standard positions.
• Build strong partnerships across CROs, internal teams, and Legal stakeholders. Collaborate with study teams, Legal, Procurement, and other stakeholders to align expectations, ensure consistent decisions, and keep negotiations progressing.
• Identify trends and drive continuous improvement. Analyze escalation drivers and cycle-time impacts; recommend solutions such as expanding fallback language, clarifying decision rights, updating templates, and targeting CRO training to reduce unnecessary escalations.
• Maintain escalation governance and knowledge management. Document decisions, rationale, and outcomes to build a usable knowledge base for CRO partners and internal stakeholders, supporting consistent, auditable negotiation approaches.
• Provide leadership through influence and guidance. Act as a trusted expert for CROs and internal teams by offering practical negotiation guidance, sharing best practices, and reinforcing the agreed escalation pathways.
• Apply a risk-based approach to protect sponsor requirements. Evaluate escalated terms for legal, financial, and operational risk; ensure alignment with applicable standards and requirements and appropriately involve Legal when risk or policy thresholds are exceeded.

Job description

Syneos Health is seeking a Sr. Site Contract Lead to manage CRO site contract escalations and guide negotiations, ensuring timely decisions and compliant guidance.

The role emphasizes alignment on templates, fallback language, and driven sponsorship decisions to enable CRO-led negotiations while maintaining control over high-risk exceptions. The successful candidate will build cross-functional partnerships with study teams, Legal, and Procurement, driving continuous improvement in negotiation