Group Lead – Content Approval Excellence & Content Operations

• Hiring Manager: Head – Scientific Communications, Medical Information & Graphics – Medical Hub
• Location: Hyderabad
• % of travel expected: As per business need
• Job type: Permanent and Full time

About the job

Our ambition: deliver best-in-class enterprise services enabling Sanofi to chase the miracles of science to improve people's lives. Sanofi has been building the foundations of enterprise services over the past few years. With the creation of the global business unit Business Operations two years ago, we have elevated our commitment to innovation and excellence.

Our Team

Sanofi Global Hub (SGH) is an internal Sanofi resource organization based in India and is setup to centralize processes and activities to support Specialty Care, Vaccines, General Medicines, CHC, CMO, and R&D, Data & Digital functions. SGH strives to be a strategic and functional partner for tactical deliveries to Medical, HEVA, and Commercial organizations in Sanofi, Globally.

Our critical success factors:

We have identified three key drivers:

1.Community - Building a vibrant team that will attract and engage talent, with four global hubs.

2.Excellence - Simplifying, standardizing and continuously improving processes to capture synergies, scale effects and productivity improvements.

3.Digitalisation - Enabling transparency, data-driven decision-making support, agility and rapid innovation across Sanofi's entire value chain.

Main responsibilities:

The overall purpose and main responsibilities are listed below:

• Provides functional and operational leadership to the Scientific Communications Operations team and Capabilities & Practices operating model, acting as the domain expert for the relevant activities within these teams, engaging stakeholders, developing the team members, and acting as a strategic thought partner aligned with the vision of the Sci Comms team.
• The Group Lead – Content Approval Excellence & Content Operations is accountable for designing, governing and continuously improving the operating framework that enables high-quality, efficient and scalable delivery across Scientific Communications.
• The role brings together content operations, scientific/content standards, process excellence, quality-at-source principles, workflow governance and technology-enabled ways of working to create a seamless end-to-end content lifecycle. The role partners closely with BO Sci Comms Leads, Medical Information, Creative, Digital/Technology, Operational Readiness, Learning & Development, Global Process Lead/GOP Owner and global Sci Comms stakeholders to enable first-time-right quality, predictable delivery, reduced rework and sustained excellence.
• The role also serves as the functional owner of the Scientific Communications quality management framework, integrating capabilities, preventive controls, independent monitoring, issues, and continuous audit readiness.
• This role is accountable not simply for running existing processes, but for continuously challenging, redesigning and improving how work is performed, embedding quality at source and leveraging technology to drive innovation and improve quality, speed, scalability and trust.

Essential job duties and responsibilities:

Acts as a strategic thought partner to the Hub Function Head of Sci Comms, MI, Graphics and Creativity aligned with the vision of the function. A trusted executive partner who anticipates needs, brings structure to complexity, communicates effectively and ensures priorities translate into timely action—allowing the Function Head to focus on strategic leadership and business outcomes.

Content Operations Management:

• Own the operational framework enabling effective delivery across the content lifecycle—from project brief through creation, review, approval and completion.
• Establish clear end-to-end workflows, roles, decision rights and handoffs.
• Oversee content/project operations and ensure effective workflow coordination, disciplined project execution and data records, prioritization, capacity visibility and delivery governance.
• Define operational service levels and performance expectations; identify and eliminate unnecessary handoffs, duplicate activities and administrative burden.
• Establish scalable operating practices across therapeutic areas and content types and oversee relevant operational services within the function’s remit.
• Own the project management support for the Sci Comms delivery ensuring the end-to-end effective project delivery of the designated publication/medical education deliverable across all phases.

Capabilities & Internal Control Framework Management:

• Own the design, governance and continuous improvement of a risk-based Scientific Communications Quality Management Framework, integrated with the end-to-end content operating model and applicable internal requirements.
• Define controlled scientific/content standards, authoring and technical review standards, quality-at-source controls and role-specific control responsibilities.
• Connect the established competency framework to a documented qualification pathway: foundational training, shadowing, supervised live work, assessment, authorization for independent work and ongoing proficiency monitoring.
• Define consistent qualification criteria, evidence requirements, reassessment triggers and project-role/risk-tier eligibility rules; partner with people managers who retain accountability for individual qualification decisions.
• Design and establish risk-based management quality monitoring, including independent sampling of content and workflow records to verify that required controls operated effectively—not merely that the final asset was acceptable.
• Define quality issue taxonomy, assessment criteria, trend analysis and escalation triggers, distinguishing scientific/content issues from process-control failures; align severity and escalation pathways with relevant leads and owners.
• Lead root-cause analysis of systemic quality failures and coordinate corrective/preventive improvements, documented ownership, follow-up sampling and effectiveness verification.
• Establish periodic management monitoring reviews, with clear reporting of qualification coverage, first-time-right quality, issue trends, control adherence, repeat findings and corrective-action effectiveness.
• Enable continuous audit readiness through controlled playbooks, qualification and training evidence, traceable workflow/review records, monitoring logs, action registers and documented management oversight, aligned to Sanofi records requirements.
• Ensuring quality assurance remains proportionate to scientific risk and avoids unnecessary duplicate checks or new administrative handoffs.

Sci Comms Content Systems, Digital & AI Integration:

• Act as the Hub Medical Communications champion for content workflow requirements within Veeva and associated content systems.
• Continuous evaluation of business requirements for efficient authoring, reference management, review and approval Veeva workflows.
• Identify opportunities for workflow automation and system-enabled quality controls.
• Partner with Digital/IT/Innovation leads, product owner, and other appropriate functions on configuration and technology implementation, while retaining clear boundaries between business-process ownership and technical system ownership.
• Partner with Analytics for content/workflow metrics to identify bottlenecks, adoption gaps and opportunities.

Knowledge Management Ecosystem

• Lead implementation and adoption of new processes across teams.
• Partner with people managers to identify recurring capability gaps and embed sustainable improvements.
• Build a culture of accountability, continuous improvement and operational discipline.
• Define and monitor measures including first time-right rate, review comments/rework, quality issues, cycle time, time to first draft, review/approval cycles.
• Translate operational data into actionable insights, root-cause interventions and measurable improvement.

SciComms Vendor Operations & Payments Management

• Own and oversee the vendor operations for payments, copyrights management.
• Lead and own compliant processes for vendor payments for print & shipment of Sci Comms materials.
• Partner with procurement, finance for effective management of business processes.

SciComms & MI Operational Excellence

• Design and improve workflows and processes
• Drive standardization of processes, templates, and tools
• Lead capacity planning, demand management and resource optimization
• Identify scope for further improvement and expansion through new initiatives and accreditations
• Own and maintain Business Continuity Plan (BCP): development, testing, updates, and stakeholder alignment to ensure MI function resilience and continuity during disruptions
• To create synergies and provide functional and operational direction across global business units, segments and key markets operations across various therapeutic areas and processes so that cost savings up to 10 mil euros are achieved with deliveries optimized through multi-layered teams.
• Demonstrates resolve and urgency to accomplish tasks without direct authority or control. Participate in cross-functional project teams as needed.  Ensure that assigned projects are completed on schedule.

People:

• Maintain effective relationships with the end stakeholders across multiple Global business units and products.
• Interact effectively with stakeholders in multiple departments.
• Constantly assist SciComms and MI writers in developing knowledge and sharing expertise.

Performance:

• Act as a strategic thought partner, operational and functional leader, providing coaching, mentoring, and expertise support.
• Provide functional expert support and oversight of deliverables.
• Supports delivery of projects in terms of resourcing, quality, timeliness, efficiency, and high technical standards.

Process:

• Support delivery of projects in terms of resourcing, quality, timeliness, efficiency, and high technical standards for deliveries made by the group
• Contribute to overall quality enhancement by ensuring high scientific standards for the output produced by the group;
• Secure adherence to compliance procedures and internal/operational risk controls in accordance with any and all applicable regulatory standards;
• Implement relevant elements of content plans and associated activities for the year identified for the assigned countries.
• Work with selected vendors within the region to deliver the required deliverables as per the defined process.
• Design an overall plan of action basis end-customers feedback & improve course content and delivery, continuous improvement and efficiency.

Stakeholder:

• Work closely with medical teams globally across GBUs as well as in countries/regions/areas to identify Sci Comms capability needs and assist in developing operating frameworks.
• Support regulatory interactions with various health authorities for inspections or audits, risk management and business continuity.
• Support the Head of SciComms Partner with Sci Comms Leadership Team for business expectations and deliveries Manage Budget, Org data & Headcount planning and ‘play to win’ priorities Oversee governance, demand and resource management, and strategic exercises Drive internal communications and project/change management across teams Represent Head SciComms in internal and external forums as needed.

About you 

Experience:      

• Approximately 12–15+ years of relevant experience, with capability and demonstrated impact prioritized over tenure. Significant experience in pharmaceutical Medical Communications, Scientific Communications, Medical Affairs/content operations or related functions.
• ≥12 years of experience implementing risk-based quality management, competency qualification, monitoring/sampling, root-cause analysis and sustainable corrective-action mechanisms in regulated content operations for Medical Communications/ Scientific Communications.     
• Demonstrated experience designing and improving complex end-to-end content processes. 
• Strong experience and understanding of pharmaceutical content development and scientific review/approval workflows.
• Experience with Veeva Vault/MedComms/PromoMats or comparable regulated content-management platforms.
• Experience establishing quality standards, governance and process controls.
• Strong process-improvement, analytical and problem-solving capability.
• Experience leading cross-functional transformation in a matrix environment.
• Strong stakeholder management, change leadership and people leadership capability.
• Experience in content creation or scientific writing for the pharmaceuticals/healthcare industry; At least 10 years of direct medical communications experience in the pharmaceutical company;
• Minimum 5 years of experience in managing global, cross-functional teams and working in, a Matrix environment; strong ability in managing a multi-layered team of ≥20 members; and ability to influence and negotiate difficult situations.
• Preferred Lean/Six Sigma or equivalent process-excellence experience.      
• Experience with AI-enabled content workflows, automation or digital transformation.
• Experience with content reuse, modular/structured content and reference/scientific-statement libraries.
• Experience developing operational/process-excellence, talent and leading teams in Sci Comms. 

Soft skills:

• Excellent communication skills (written, verbal, and presentation), Team management, and Stakeholder management; communication skills; and ability to work independently and within a team environment, demonstrated ability to motivate, coach, or mentor people, work as an SME, develop and manage high performing teams.
• Sees and optimises the entire value stream rather than isolated activities.
• Translates Medical Communications needs into Veeva, automation and AI-enabled workflows. Moves teams from established ways of working toward a disciplined, scalable operating model.

Technical skills:

• As applicable (Including but not limited to) Expert knowledge of medical communications, Medical Content Creation, Review & Approval, Medical operational excellence, risk management skills, relevant industry codes & publication practices. Project management.

Education:

• Advanced degree in life sciences/pharmacy/similar discipline (Ph.D., Master, or bachelor’s in science, D Pharms) or medical degree (MBBS, BDS, BAMS, BHMS, MD)

Languages:

• Excellent knowledge of the English language (spoken and written) Pursue progress, discover extraordinary Better is out there.
• Better medications, better outcomes, better science. But progress doesn’t happen without people – people from different backgrounds, in different locations, doing different roles, all united by one thing: a desire to make miracles happen. So, let’s be those people.
• At Sanofi, we provide equal opportunities to all regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or gender identity. Watch our ALL IN video and check out our Diversity Equity and Inclusion actions at sanofi.com!

Pursue progress, discover extraordinary

Better is out there. Better medications, better outcomes, better science. But progress doesn’t happen without people – people from different backgrounds, in different locations, doing different roles, all united by one thing: a desire to make miracles happen. So, let’s be those people.

At Sanofi, we provide equal opportunities to all regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, or gender identity.

Watch our ALL IN video and check out our Diversity Equity and Inclusion actions at sanofi.com!

Pursue progress, discover extraordinary

Better is out there. Better medications, better outcomes, better science. But progress doesn’t happen without people – people from different backgrounds, in different locations, doing different roles, all united by one thing: a desire to make miracles happen. So, let’s be those people.

At Sanofi, we provide equal opportunities to all regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, ability or gender identity.

Watch our ALL IN video and check out our Diversity Equity and Inclusion actions at sanofi.com!