Associate Counsel, Life Sciences

Certara • Radnor Township, PA

1d

About The Position

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.

Requirements

• Juris Doctor (or equivalent law degree) and active membership in good standing in at least one U.S. jurisdiction.
• Approximately 1–3 years of relevant commercial transactions experience at a law firm, in-house legal department, or comparable environment.
• Strong foundational drafting and negotiation skills, particularly for MSAs, services agreements, SaaS/software licenses, SOW-related frameworks, and privacy/data-processing terms.
• Sound judgment about when to resolve an issue independently and when to escalate.
• Strong organization, attention to detail, responsiveness, and comfort managing multiple matters and deadlines.
• Interest in contract playbooks, template maintenance, knowledge management, and process improvement.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with life sciences, pharmaceutical, biotech, health technology, software, data, or professional-services transactions is strongly preferred.
• Working familiarity with privacy and regulated-data issues; exposure to HIPAA and GDPR is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Negotiate a broad portfolio of life sciences and technology agreements.
• Advise business teams in practical terms.
• Help deliver a disciplined, scalable contracting experience through clear templates, playbooks, and escalation standards.
• Draft, review, and negotiate 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 amendments, escalating novel or high-risk issues as appropriate.
• Manage assigned matters from intake through signature, maintaining clear status, required approvals, and organized matter records.
• Apply Legal playbooks, templates, approval thresholds, and fallback positions consistently; identify recurring issues that should be addressed through updated guidance, templates, or process improvements.
• Advise business stakeholders in plain language and collaborate closely with Sales, Finance, Privacy, Security, Procurement, and Commercial Operations.
• Review revisions that introduce legal or complex commercial terms, including revisions to evaluation agreements, and route matters for senior escalation when needed.
• Support Legal ownership of order form and task order templates, including quality checks and controlled self-service.
• Contribute to knowledge management, training, metrics, template maintenance, playbook updates, and alternative legal talent/provider coordination.
• Balance contract velocity and risk using sound judgment, strong organization, and responsive stakeholder communication.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree