Medical Science Liaison (Vaccines)
About this opportunity
Job title: Medical Scientific Liaison (Vaccines)
Location: Tokyo, Japan
About the job
As Medical Scientific Liaison (Vaccine) within our Vaccines Medical team, you'll be the vital connection between cutting-edge vaccine science and healthcare professionals across Japan, building trusted relationships and sharing scientific insights that help protect millions of lives. Ready to get started?
Join the team protecting half a billion lives every year with next-gen science, mRNA innovation, and AI-driven breakthroughs. In Vaccines, you'll help advance prevention on a global scale - and shape the future of immunization. As a field-based MSL, you'll serve as the extension of our medical function, developing enduring partnerships with key opinion leaders and healthcare institutions throughout Japan.
About Sanofi:
We're an R&D-driven, AI-powered biopharma company committed to improving people's lives and delivering compelling growth. Our deep understanding of the immune system – and innovative pipeline – enables us to invent medicines and vaccines that treat and protect millions of people around the world. Together, we chase the miracles of science to improve people's lives.
Main responsibilities:
Build and maintain trusted scientific partnerships with healthcare professionals, key opinion leaders, and medical institutions across Japan through proactive field engagement
Deliver high-quality, balanced scientific information during one-to-one interactions and group settings, responding to unsolicited requests with accuracy and expertise
Organize and facilitate local scientific meetings including hospital staff meetings and webinars, aligned with stakeholder engagement and country medical plans
Generate valuable insights from field interactions and collaborate with internal teams to inform medical strategy and evidence-generation activities
Support investigator-initiated research submissions and manage local advisory boards in full compliance with regulatory requirements
Communicate the clinical value of vaccine products to healthcare decision-makers and contribute to population health outcomes
Travel extensively (80%) across Japan to engage with healthcare professionals and build meaningful scientific relationships
About you
Education: MD, Pharmacy degree, or postgraduate science degree
Experience: Background in stakeholder strategy, planning, and engagement within healthcare or pharmaceutical settings
Technical skills: Strong disease and therapeutic area knowledge, proficiency with CRM tools, and ability to deliver impactful scientific exchanges across multiple channels and formats
Soft skills: Strategic thinking, business acumen, excellent interpersonal relationship building, transversal collaboration abilities, and learning agility
Languages: Native Japanese with intermediate level spoken and written business English
Why choose us?
Work at the forefront of AI-driven research, smart manufacturing, and groundbreaking mRNA platforms that are redefining the future of immunology
Help protect half a billion people every year, contributing to one of the largest global vaccination efforts in healthcare
Make the impossible possible for millions by contributing to breakthrough moments like the world's first RSV toddler vaccine
Share knowledge with leading scientists, healthcare professionals, and experts in a purpose-driven community dedicated to protecting millions worldwide
Develop your career with access to mentoring, international mobility programs, and opportunities to grow across four continents
Experience the dynamic nature of field-based work, connecting directly with healthcare professionals and making a tangible impact across Japan
Join a workplace where diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core, with Employee Resource Groups and leadership programs that celebrate every voice
Pursue Progress . Discover Extraordinary .
Join Sanofi and step into a new era of science - where your growth can be just as transformative as the work we do. We invest in you to reach further, think faster, and do what's never-been-done-before. You'll help push boundaries, challenge convention, and build smarter solutions that reach the communities we serve. Ready to chase the miracles of science and improve people's lives? Let's Pursue Progress and Discover Extraordinary – together.
At Sanofi, we provide equal opportunities to all regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.
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 !
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Medical Affairs role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 924 comparable Medical Affairs roles across 130 biopharma companies.
Salary context
175 of 924 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function. This posting doesn't list a seniority level, so peers aren't narrowed by seniority either -- the range below may span more levels than usual.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 924 comparable roles
+ 52 more countries
Seniority mix
502 of 924 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
325 of 924 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.