Vice President - Medical Affairs

RocheShanghai, ShanghaiOn-siteFull-timePrincipal, 12–15+ yearsListed 1 hour ago

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About this role

At Roche you can show up as yourself, embraced for the unique qualities you bring. Our culture encourages personal expression, open dialogue, and genuine connections,  where you are valued, accepted and respected for who you are, allowing you to thrive both personally and professionally. This is how we aim to prevent, stop and cure diseases and ensure everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Join Roche, where every voice matters.

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The Position

The Vice President, Medical Affairs for Roche Pharma China provides visionary strategic direction and executive leadership for the affiliate Medical Department. As a key contributor to the broader affiliate leadership, this role delivers deep medical expertise and ensures unwavering adherence to the highest scientific, ethical, and regulatory standards. Acting as Roche’s primary medical authority with external stakeholders, the VP shapes and executes a long-term medical strategy across diverse therapeutic areas to drive patient access and champion the optimal use of Roche therapies.

Additionally, this position directs comprehensive evidence-generation strategies—including Real-World Evidence (RWE), Phase IV Clinical Operations, and Investigator-Initiated Studies (IIS)—while maintaining rigorous oversight of local pharmacovigilance and drug safety. The VP orchestrates high-impact scientific exchange, omnichannel medical education, and strategic partnerships across the healthcare ecosystem, actively engaging Therapeutic Area Experts, health authorities, patient organizations, and payers. Ultimately, this role safeguards medical integrity in media communications and enforces strict compliance across all medical activities.

Principle Roles & Responsibilities / Accountabilities

Strategic Medical Leadership & Business Partnership

●        Acts as the principal medical advisor to the Pharma President and leadership team, providing deep scientific and clinical insights to shape overarching business strategies.

●        Drives cross-functional synergy by partnering seamlessly with Regulatory Affairs, Market Access, and Commercial functions. Integrates medical perspectives into enterprise strategies, ensuring clinical value evidence accelerates HTA submissions, NRDL inclusion, and multi-level medical insurance structures.

●        Upholds scientific and medical integrity as an independent voice, co-steering business decisions to harmoniously balance patient outcomes, sustainable commercial growth, and Roche’s reputation.

Medical Strategy & Tactics

●        Provides overarching strategic guidance and scientific leadership to Disease Area Heads (DAHs), empowering them to design and execute highly competitive medical plans across Roche’s diversified therapeutic pipelines.

●        Steers the holistic medical portfolio strategy, governing cross-disease area resource allocation and optimizing the mix of evidence generation and medical investments to ensure enterprise-wide synergies and maximum patient impact.

●        Champions the alignment of affiliate medical strategies with global Lifecycle plans, translating healthcare landscape evolution and market dynamics into strategic directives that guide DAHs in delivering differentiated clinical value propositions.

Scientific Authority & Ecosystem Partnerships

●        Represents Roche as the primary medical authority in the external environment, continually elevating the company's scientific reputation.

●        Establishes and sustains executive-level strategic partnerships with Therapeutic Area Experts (TAEs), academic institutions, cooperative groups, health authorities, and payers to enable the optimal and safe use of therapies.

●        Expand and orchestrate strategic partnerships across China's dynamic life-science ecosystem—actively forging high-value scientific collaborations with emerging biotechs, leading translational research centers, and clinical trial networks to co-create evidence and accelerate medical innovation.

Evidence Generation & Patient Partnership

●      Governs the affiliate’s evidence generation portfolio, overseeing Clinical Operations (Phase IV and Investigator-Initiated Studies) to ensure rigorous trial conduct, data transparency, and scientific robustness.

●      Strengthens the generation of Real-World Data (RWD) / Real-World Evidence (RWE) to fulfill local evidence needs and facilitate early access pathways.

●      Champions a deeply patient-centric culture, forging strategic alliances with Patient Advocacy Groups to systematically integrate patient voices, disease burdens, and unmet needs into evidence design and medical solutions.

Medical Governance & Risk Management

●      Serves as the accountable executive for medical quality and compliance, establishing a robust local quality management system.

●      Ensures all medical activities, material reviews, and training programs rigorously comply with Roche policies (SOPs), ethical guidelines, and China's evolving, strict industry regulations.

●      Oversees local pharmacovigilance and drug safety reporting processes, proactively anticipating, assessing, and mitigating medical risks.

Talent Strategy & Organizational Excellence

●      Champions the VACC (Visionary, Architect, Coach, Catalyst) leadership, fostering a highly engaging, inclusive, and high performing organizational culture.

●      Drives organizational capability building across Medical Affairs, empowering teams to adopt future-ready ways of working and capabilities.

Oversees medical resource stewardship, budget allocation, and the attraction, development, and retention of top diverse medical talent across the company

Qualification and Experience

Education/Qualifications:

●      Medical degree is required. Board certification in a medical specialty is appreciated.

●      Pharmaceutical medicine training is appreciated.

Leadership Competencies:

●      Act as a role model of Visionary, Architect, Coach and Catalyst (VACC).

●      Maintain a global strategic mindset and inspire high performance of a diversified self-organized teams.

●      Operate at strategic level and also can be hands-on in service of our North Star and the ecosystem.

●      Highly creative leader of cross functional and networked teams, who knows how to find and develop diverse talent and connect them to the wider enterprise.

●      An effective global communicator and mobilize teams to achieve our purpose and vision.

●      Attract, retain, develop and place diverse talent across the enterprise.

●      Demonstrated capability in driving organizational agile transformation and leading digital healthcare initiatives

Job Required Competencies (Experience & Knowledge):

●      Substantial experience of practicing clinical medicine and clinical research.

●      Extensive experience in the medical function of the biotechnology / pharmaceutical industry, with broad therapeutic area expertise highly preferred

●      Product development experience.

●      Strong track record in strategic planning and implementation of key Medical affairs activities in data generation, scientific communications, medical education and external stakeholder management and cooperation.

●      Clinical and post-marketing drug safety and risk management.

●      External stakeholders engagement (incl. TAE, patient association, collaborative groups, Health authorities, payers).

●      Experience in product launches, especially utilizing RWE for accelerated approval pathways

●      Experience with the China healthcare market is preferred.

Travel Frequency

●      25% - 50%

Who we are

A healthier future drives us to innovate. Together, more than 100’000 employees across the globe are dedicated to advance science, ensuring everyone has access to healthcare today and for generations to come. Our efforts result in more than 26 million people treated with our medicines and over 30 billion tests conducted using our Diagnostics products. We empower each other to explore new possibilities, foster creativity, and keep our ambitions high, so we can deliver life-changing healthcare solutions that make a global impact.

Let’s build a healthier future, together.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.