About this role
The IQVIA Clinical Functional Service Partnerships (Clinical FSP) department provides highly skilled professionals who work as integrated members of our client’s clinical development teams. In this role, you will combine operational depth with strategic and scientific leadership, while being supported by experienced functional experts, technology, and data-driven insights.
We are looking for a (Senior) Clinical Trial Leader who can take clear accountability for complex global Phase III trials, lead cross-functional teams, and turn scientific ambition into successful trial delivery. Lead with purpose. Shape the strategy. Deliver globally.
(Senior) Global Clinical Trial Leader
This opportunity is especially suited to you if you:
• currently lead, or have very recently led, complex Phase III trials globally;
• are comfortable being the accountable leader for overall trial success, delivery, quality, timelines, and budget awareness;
• can engage credibly in scientific, protocol, and indication-related discussions while translating decisions into executable plans;
• build alignment with senior stakeholders, governance forums, decision-making committees, and global cross-functional partners;
Your role and impact
As (Senior) Global Clinical Trial Leader, you will provide leadership and direction to the core and extended trial team and serve as the accountable point for the end-to-end success and delivery of assigned global Phase III clinical trials. You will independently steer preparation, set-up, initiation, conduct, close-out, and reporting, ensuring that scientific objectives are translated into operationally feasible plans and delivered to defined milestones and key performance indicators.
Beyond operational execution, you will act as a strategic and scientifically credible trial partner. You will anticipate challenges, shape risk-balanced decisions, and create clarity across a complex global matrix. You will represent the trial confidently with senior stakeholders and governance bodies, communicate trial status transparently, and drive timely decisions and escalation when required.
What will make you successful in this role
• Recent and ongoing hands-on leadership of complex, international Phase III trials, with end-to-end accountability.
• Clear ownership for trial success and delivery, with the ability to inspire teams, set direction, define expectations, and make sound decisions under pressure. Successfully manage and resolve emerging risks to trial milestones.
• Strong scientific and indication fluency, protocol and other essential study document development experience, and the confidence to challenge assumptions constructively while protecting operational feasibility.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills across cultures, functions, senior management, governance forums, external partners, and decision-making committees.
Key accountabilities
Lead and deliver: Provide direction to global cross-functional trial teams and independently lead complex Phase III studies from preparation through reporting, with accountability for quality, milestones, timelines, operational execution, and budget awareness. Shape protocol and trial strategy: Drive protocol development with medical, statistical, and cross-functional partners. Bring scientific and indication understanding to design discussions, constructively challenge assumptions, and ensure operational feasibility and implementation readiness. Steer global planning and feasibility: Own accurate trial planning, country allocation input, feasibility oversight, recruitment planning, patient and site engagement considerations, and alignment of global and country-level activities. Drive governance and decisions: Lead trial oversight and governance forums, prepare clear recommendations, and secure timely, well-informed decisions from senior stakeholders and decision-making committees. Manage risk, issues, and escalation: Identify emerging risks early, assess impact, define risk-balanced mitigation, track corrective actions, resolve conflict constructively, and escalate with appropriate timing, context, and proposed solutions. Create cross-functional alignment: Translate complex scientific, medical, statistical, regulatory, safety, and operational requirements into feasible protocols, with clear actions, ownership, priorities, and realistic timelines for the core and extended team. Oversee trial delivery partners: Maintain effective oversight of vendors and outsourced services, including scope, performance, quality, dependencies, and issue resolution in collaboration with accountable functions. Maintain quality and compliance: Ensure adherence to GCP, ICH, applicable global and local regulations, sponsor procedures, and inspection-ready documentation throughout the trial lifecycle. Use data to steer performance: Use dashboards, metrics, systems, and operational reviews to monitor progress, identify trends, ensure timely data cleaning and delivery, and protect milestone achievement. Support critical trial outputs: Coordinate cross-functional contributions to core trial and patient-facing documents, amendments, training updates, authority and ethics responses, safety and data monitoring activities, clinical trial reporting, TMF completeness, registry disclosure, and publication support where applicable. Improve how we work: Contribute to process optimization, cross-functional initiatives, and adoption of relevant technology and practices across clinical development.
What you bring
Essential: Recent global Phase III leadership. Strong, current or very recent experience as the accountable trial lead for complex Phase III studies conducted globally. Essential: End-to-end ownership. Demonstrated accountability across study set-up, initiation, conduct, close-out, reporting, governance, documentation, and delivery outcomes. Essential: Strategic and scientific contribution. Proven experience contributing to protocol development and trial design with medical and statistical partners, including operational feasibility input and constructive challenge. Essential: Senior stakeholder management. A strong record of influencing senior internal and external stakeholders, upper management, governance forums, and decision-making committees, including in high-pressure or ambiguous situations. Leadership in a matrix. Ability to inspire high-performing cross-functional teams, influence without relying on hierarchy, manage conflict, and navigate complex global organizations and partner interfaces. Risk-based delivery mindset. Proactive risk management, sound judgement, structured problem-solving, clear escalation, and a focus on quality, patients, timelines, and value. Communication excellence. Clear, concise, audience-aware communication, active listening, cultural awareness, and confidence presenting complex trial topics and recommendations. Clinical research foundation. Minimum of 10 years of relevant clinical research experience, including at least 5 years of global clinical trial management experience in a pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or CRO environment. Regulatory knowledge. Strong working knowledge of GCP, ICH guidelines, EU Clinical Trials Regulation as applicable, SOPs, and relevant global and local requirements. Education. A Master’s degree or higher in life sciences, medicine, pharmacy, or a related discipline is preferred. An equivalent combination of education and highly relevant experience may also be considered.
Therapeutic and operational background
• Recent Phase III experience in oncology, inflammation, and/or cardiovascular, metabolic, renal (CMR) and/or eye-health indications is strongly preferred.
• Experience in other therapeutic areas may be considered where the candidate demonstrates strong scientific adaptability and clear evidence of senior global Phase III trial leadership.
• Confidence using clinical trial management systems, eTMF and study tools, dashboards, Microsoft Office applications, and data-driven oversight approaches.
If you enjoy taking full ownership of complex global trials, bringing teams together around a clear plan, and combining scientific thinking with disciplined operational delivery, we would be pleased to hear from you.
Please apply with your English CV.
IQVIA is a leading global provider of clinical research services, commercial insights and healthcare intelligence to the life sciences and healthcare industries. We create intelligent connections to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative medical treatments to help improve patient outcomes and population health worldwide. Learn more at https://jobs.iqvia.com
IQVIA is committed to integrity in our hiring process and maintains a zero tolerance policy for candidate fraud. All information and credentials submitted in your application must be truthful and complete. Any false statements, misrepresentations, or material omissions during the recruitment process will result in immediate disqualification of your application, or termination of employment if discovered later, in accordance with applicable law. We appreciate your honesty and professionalism.