Lead Counsel Central Europe

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Job Description

The Lead Counsel Central Europe serves as Takeda’s senior legal partner for the Central Europe Cluster, overseeing legal support across the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. The Lead Counsel operates in highly varied legal, regulatory, and commercial environments, leads execution of legal strategy within the markets and partners with Cluster leadership to support decision-making by influencing leadership discussions.  

The role provides clear, business‑aligned legal advice that enables confident decision‑making across the three countries with differing healthcare systems, compliance expectations, and levels of market maturity.  

This position is responsible for ensuring consistent legal standards across the Cluster while tailoring advice to local needs, balancing complexity, risk, and business priorities. The Lead Counsel leads legal decision-making on complex legal and risk matters, with appropriate escalation of high impact issues, and contributes to the implementation of innovative legal service delivery solutions (digital, simplification, efficiency) in alignment with Europe and IBU Legal.  

The Lead Counsel fosters strong collaboration across countries, drives and implements cohesive ways of working that strengthen Takeda’s legal capability and regional execution. The role requires the ability to navigate cross‑border issues, anticipate regulatory and policy developments, and enable decisions for commercial, access, and operational priorities with practical, solutions‑focused advice.  

As a key contributor to the European Markets legal leadership structure, the Lead Counsel Central Europe plays a central role in building strong partnerships with Cluster and local leadership and the business, as well as a unified legal approach across markets while maintaining deep understanding of local dynamics, ensuring Takeda can operate confidently, compliantly, and effectively across this strategically important region. 

How you will contribute: 

• Provides commercially grounded, strategic legal guidance that enables sound decision-making across diverse markets and strengthens business impact across the region.
• Serves as the strategic legal partner to the Cluster’s leadership, providing risk based, decision-enabling guidance with a strong enterprise mindset.
• Builds strong and trusted partnerships with business stakeholders and cross-functional teams, enabling effective collaboration, aligned, solution-oriented legal support, as well as driving effective decision-making. 
• Navigates diverse legal systems, cultures, and healthcare environments with a global mindset, fostering effective collaboration across the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland and the European Markets.
• Delivers high quality outcomes with ownership, urgency, and a disciplined focus on the priorities that matter most across the cluster and markets.
• Proactively identifies, assesses, and manages legal and regulatory risks across jurisdictions, enabling compliant growth and responsible innovation.
• Adapts to evolving regional dynamics, simplifies complexity for local business teams, and leverages digital tools to enhance efficiency and alignment across markets.
• Communicates with simplicity, as well as clearly and concisely across diverse cultures to ensure shared understanding and support confident decision-making.
• Supports continuous improvement initiatives, contributes to change efforts with resilience, and fosters a collaborative, growth-oriented culture across the regional legal organization

Skills:

• Master’s degree in law and active legal license within a European jurisdiction, preferably the Netherlands, Austria or Switzerland.   
• Advanced professional experience in pharmaceutical law, as in-house counsel or in a highly regarded law firm or both.   
• Extensive post-qualification legal experience (typically 8+ years) advising on complex legal issues, including access, regulatory, compliance, litigation and corporate matters within the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries. 
• Experience managing external legal counsel. 
• Growth-oriented culture across the regional legal organization.

Additional requirements:

• Languages required: at least Dutch or German, ideally both.  
• Location: Candidate must be based in one of the counties of the Central Europe Cluster i.e. the Netherlands, Austria or Switzerland.  
• Role requires regular travel across the Central Europe cluster to support business engagement and effective legal partnering.

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For information about our benefits, please click here.

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