Senior Director of External Quality Operations- Packaging

Gilead Sciences, Inc.; Foster City (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Senior Director of External Quality Operations to lead its Packaging Quality Assurance Team. This pivotal role involves overseeing GMP activities and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards for clinical and commercial products. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience in pharmaceutical packaging operations, strong leadership skills, and the ability to drive continuous improvement initiatives. This dynamic position offers the opportunity to collaborate with cross-functional teams and influence key business objectives while ensuring the delivery of safe, life-changing therapies to patients worldwide.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of relevant experience in pharmaceutical quality.
• Expert knowledge in technical and regulatory requirements.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Packaging Quality Assurance Team in overseeing GMP activities.
• Develop and implement quality programs to ensure compliance.

Skills

GMP principles

Quality Assurance

Regulatory compliance

Leadership

Communication skills

Problem-solving

Education

BS in Science or related field

MS, MD, PharmD, PhD or MBA

Job description

Senior Director of External Quality Operations- Packaging

Quality Assurance delivers on Gilead’s commitment to bring life-changing therapies to patients through the robust QA processes and systems. Our approach is agile, innovative and collaborative and our teams are committed to the successful delivery of safe life-changing therapies.

Job Summary:

Gilead Sciences is currently seeking a Senior Director level position to be the leader of Packaging Quality Assurance Team in the Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing (PDM) organization. The Packaging Quality Assurance Team provides quality oversight of GMP activities at Gilead’s contract organization global network supporting the packaging of clinical and commercial for clinical trials and commercial distribution respectively. The leader of Packaging Quality Assurance Team is a key strategic member of Quality Assurance management team in continually assessing quality systems, providing guidance and direction for implementation of effective and efficient quality processes. The candidate must have demonstrated leadership skills and with extensive working knowledge of clinical and commercial packaging operations, familiar with relevant GMP and regulatory requirements for US, EU, and other countries where Gilead’s clinical trials are conducted, and commercial products are distributed. The candidate must have prior leadership experience at contract manufacturing organizations or have direct experience overseeing contract manufacturing organizations. The successful candidate must be extremely familiar with applicable regulations and requirements with outsourced operations and clarity of the role and responsibilities between marketing authorization holder and contract manufacturing organization. The candidate must possess strong communication, influencing and negotiation skills, be able to evaluate options and trade-offs and utilize available resources to achieve the most positive impact to the business and be able to partner with leaders in in Portfolio Strategy team, Manufacturing, Packaging, Supply Chain, Regulatory CMC, and the wider PDM Quality organization to achieve business objectives. The successful candidate must have proven track records in leading packaging operations in a biotech or pharmaceutical development environment and strong knowledge of cGMP quality systems and have extensive experience in managing audits, inspections, and health authority interactions.

Job Functions:

• Execute an integrated and sustainable external quality strategy and company content priorities for Gilead’s clinical and commercial products and contract organizations based on the value proposition for Gilead (Integrity, Inclusion, Teamwork, Accountability, Excellence) and available SMEs.

• Develop processes to communicate learnings and drive any related activities for Gilead’s clinical and commercial products in support of a robust compliant lifecycle for the programs.

• Develop a process for exchange of lessons learned across multiple company representatives and identify opportunities for Gilead’s process improvements.

• Collaborate with Technical and Quality leadership to identify solutions and processes and align with key partners on implementation of new requirements.

• Implement continuous improvement initiatives to drive quality programs and ensure maximum productivity. Ensure systems are world-class and meet the needs of all internal and external constituencies with an emphasis on process, quality, productivity, budget control, and profitability.

• Develop, implement, and monitor quality programs, policies, and procedures to ensure compliance with GxP standards, corporate policies, FDA, EMA, and other regulatory body regulations and guidelines.

• Set and drive compliance to department, site and global KPIs.

• Evaluate all current quality systems and processes and recommend and implement appropriate enhancements and trainings to ensure the achievement of Gilead long-term objectives.

• Professional organization engagement and representation; benchmarking in industry networks.

• Provide guidance to the business teams on technical regulatory requirements and lead and assist where needed.

• Participate on Joint Steering Committees (JSC) and Joint Management Committees (JMC) as Quality’s voice for contract organizations’ oversight.

• Conduct regular review and assessment of regulatory intelligence and communicate any concerns, trends, gaps, alerts to Quality management in a timely fashion.

• Think and act globally to anticipate potential problems and risks related to regulatory compliance expectations.

• 10 – 15% travel based on strategic plan.

Knowledge, Experience and Skills:

• Expert in quality requirements pertaining to pharmaceutical clinical and commercial packaging operations.

• In-depth understanding and application of GMP principles, concepts, best practices, and standards in the US and internationally.

• Demonstrated ability to develop and improve complex concepts, techniques, and standards and new applications based on quality principles and theories.

• In-depth knowledge in Global requirements/standards for product registration and life-cycle management of product quality.

• Demonstrated ability to develop solutions to complex problems, which require a high degree of ingenuity, creativity, and innovativeness, and where precedent may not exist.

• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills.

• Ability to interact with regulatory agencies as needed and possesses the ability to represent Gilead in public forums.

• Demonstrated experience and ability to manage team of highly technical staffs.

• Expert in managing resources to address competing projects and timelines.

Basic Qualifications:

• A BS in science or a related field with at least 12 years of relevant experience, or an advanced science degree (e.g., MS, MD, PharmD, PhD) or an advanced business degree (e.g., MBA) with at least 8 years of relevant experience.

• Prior leadership experience in a complex organization a must.

• Expert knowledge in technical and regulatory requirements pertaining to pharmaceutical packaging operations for clinical trials and commercial distributions.

• Biopharmaceutical or Pharmaceutical experience a must.

• Prior experience leading contract manufacturing operations or overseeing contract manufacturing operations a must.

• Experience with different pharmaceutical modalities, e.g., active pharmaceutical ingredients, parenteral, biologics, and medical device preferred.

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Job Requisition ID R0043909

Full Time/Part Time Full-Time

Job Level Director

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