Senior Counsel, Life Sciences

Certara•Radnor Township, PA

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.
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.
Clear, concise communication and the credibility to advise senior business and legal stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience with contract playbooks, template libraries, approval thresholds, process design, or alternative legal service providers is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

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.