Governance and Ethics Lead

Job Title: Governance and Ethics Lead

Location: Dublin

Introduction to role

Are you ready to shape governance that enables responsible innovation while protecting patients, our reputation, and long-term business impact? In this role, you will set the bar for ethical decision-making and pragmatic compliance, enabling teams to move faster with confidence and clarity.

You will lead how we evaluate and approve novel, complex activities across the enterprise, ensuring our promotional and non-promotional work—spanning interactions with healthcare professionals, organizations, and corporate affairs—delivers measurable value without compromising integrity. Can you envision building a framework that removes friction, anticipates risk, and scales new ways of working across the full patient journey?

Accountabilities

• Signatory Approval: Provide final approval of specified above-brand materials and activities linked to promotion, interactions with Health Care Professionals and Organisations, and corporate affairs; extend support to therapy-area reviews when required.
• Cross-Functional Committee Leadership: Chair a cross-functional governance committee to review novel and complex activities, uphold standards, and approve associated materials, enabling value-added delivery in a pragmatic and compliant manner.
• Governance Framework Leadership: Implementation of local governance and decision-making frameworks, ensuring ethical, compliant execution across related activities.
• Risk Anticipation and Mitigation: Work to anticipate emerging risks and opportunities; design and implement practical measures that prevent issues before they escalate and keep the organization compliant.
• Ways of working: Leads the establishment and coordination of local processes and approval streams to mitigate risks while streamlining ways of working.
• Metrics and Quality Tracking: Generation of metrics and tracking of activities to ensure continued high standard and quality of all processes and associated activities.Training and Capability Building: Work with Nominated Signatories to develop, coordinate, and deliver regular training and coaching, raising compliance related competencies and knowledge across the business.
• SOP Management: Create and maintain local SOPs, checklists, and guidances for review, approval, re-approval, recall, and withdrawal; contribute to the development and maintenance of related SOPs and policies to reflect codes of practice, internal standards, and local legislation.
• Good Practice Promotion: Share successes, troubleshoot issues with cross-functional partners, and embed efficiencies that elevate system performance and user experience.
• Compliance Projects and Remediation: Proactive identification of pain points and compliance gaps and leading projects to address issues and mitigate risks; Drive tasks through to completion demonstrating initiative and confidence in decision-making.
• Cross-Functional Partnership: Collaborate with Nominated Signatories, Medical, Franchise/Brand Managers, Market Access, and Corporate Affairs to ensure activities are compliant, high-quality, and aligned to medical and business strategies.
• Compliance Advisory: Provide timely, practical guidance on compliance matters across the Marketing Company; support inter-company dialogue where relevant.
• Signatory Support: Support validation and revalidation of Nominated Signatories and maintain strong interfaces with signatory activities.
• Strategic and Operational Balance: Deliver day-to-day delivery while advancing strategic initiatives that future-proof our governance model. Confidently navigate ambiguity and balance compliance requirements with business needs.

Essential Skills/Experience

• Degree in medicine, pharmacy, pharmacology or other relevant life sciences.
• Expert knowledge and understanding of relevant legislation and external codes of practice governing promotional activities.
• Demonstrate critical thinking, pragmatism and solution-oriented approaches/problem-solving skills.
• Ability to make decisions using evidence, knowledge and experience even when the way forward is not clear.
• Proven ability to anticipate risks, identify gaps and propose solutions to address.
• Demonstrable experience of a continuous improvement mind-set.
• Working experience in medical affairs and/or signatory activities.
• Effective time management skills, with proven evidence of effective collaborative working and accountability.
• High ethical standards. An understanding of ethical decision-making processes and an ability to discuss ethical and regulatory issues with credibility and authority.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively across teams and exercise decisive authority while taking into account diverse views and opinions to enable solutions aligned with company values.

Desirable Skills/Experience

• Project management experience
• Proven expertise in delivering training
• Practical experience working with digital / omni-channel projects
• Knowledge of AstraZeneca therapy areas

Why AstraZeneca

Here you will blend scientific insight with commercial execution to improve the patient journey end to end—identifying pain points, removing barriers, and scaling solutions that matter. We move with pace and autonomy, bringing diverse perspectives together in the same room to unlock bold thinking and practical outcomes. You will work alongside experts who value kindness alongside ambition, encouraged to start small, learn fast, and scale what works. Your governance leadership will directly enable innovations that reach patients sooner and more safely, while building capabilities that set you up for future impact.

Call to Action

Take the lead in shaping ethical, scalable governance that accelerates innovation and improves patient outcomes—step into this role and help turn intent into measurable impact today!

Date Posted

19-Jun-2026

Closing Date

27-Jun-2026

Our mission is to build an inclusive and equitable environment. We want people to feel they belong at AstraZeneca and Alexion, starting with our recruitment process. We welcome and consider applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of characteristics. We offer reasonable adjustments/accommodations to help all candidates to perform at their best. If you have a need for any adjustments/accommodations, please complete the section in the application form.