[Hiring] Senior Site Contract Lead @Syneos Health

Role Description

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; escalate 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.

Qualifications

• Experience in contract negotiation and management.
• Strong understanding of legal and operational contracting issues.
• Ability to build partnerships and collaborate effectively.
• Analytical skills to identify trends and drive improvements.
• Leadership skills to provide guidance and influence stakeholders.

Requirements

• Proven experience in a similar role.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
• Knowledge of healthcare and pharmaceutical industry standards.

Benefits

• Company car or car allowance.
• Health benefits including Medical, Dental, and Vision.
• Company match 401k.
• Eligibility to participate in Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
• Eligibility to earn commissions/bonus based on company and individual performance.
• Flexible paid time off (PTO) and sick time.

Company Description

Syneos Health® is a leading fully-integrated life sciences services organization built to accelerate customer success. We partner with innovators at every point across the drug development and commercialization continuum, helping them navigate complexity, anticipate change and accelerate progress.

• Over the past 5 years, we have worked with 94% of all Novel FDA Approved Drugs.
• 95% of EMA Authorized Products.
• Over 200 Studies across 73,000 Sites and 675,000+ Trial patients.