Merck KGaA Posted October 9, 2026

Assoc Dir., Clinical Quality Mgmt. Lead

Feltham, London, United Kingdom FULL_TIME
Notify me about similar jobs

Merck KGaA is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

Work Your Magic with us!

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you’ve got big plans – so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people’s lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

United As One for Patients, our purpose in Healthcare is to help create, improve and prolong lives. We develop medicines, intelligent devices and innovative technologies in therapeutic areas such as Oncology, Neurology and Fertility. Our teams work together across 6 continents with passion and relentless curiosity in order to help patients at every stage of life. Joining our Healthcare team is becoming part of a diverse, inclusive and flexible working culture, presenting great opportunities for personal development and career advancement across the globe.

Your Role

At the heart of global clinical trials, quality is not a checkpoint, it is a discipline that shapes every decision. In this pivotal role, you will serve as a subject matter expert in risk-based quality management, guiding cross-functional study teams to embed quality principles from the earliest stages of clinical trial design through to completion. This is an active, ownership driven position for someone who has lived the realities of clinical trial operations and is ready to lead from within.

You will lead the implementation and continuous improvement of quality processes across the clinical development lifecycle, ensuring that critical data and processes are identified, risks are proactively identified and managed in a proportionate manner, and trials are consistently inspection-ready. Working closely with service providers and international study teams, you will define quality tolerance limits, maintain quality risk management plans, support risk-based monitoring strategies, and co-lead preparation for regulatory authority inspections. You will also lead the investigation of and response to quality issues, driving accountability and continuous improvement across assigned trials.

The role could be based either in the UK or in Poland.

Who You Are

You hold a degree in medical science, life science, or a related field (a postgraduate qualification is preferred), and bring at least eight years of hands-on experience spanning the full clinical development lifecycle, including trial design, start-up, conduct, analysis, and reporting.

You bring substantial hands on experience in clinical trial operations, gained within a contract research organization or a sponsor study team with end to end study accountability

You have deep expertise in clinical quality risk management, Quality by Design principles, risk-based monitoring, and Good Clinical Practice inspection readiness, with a strong working knowledge of international regulatory requirements and harmonisation guidelines.

You have direct experience supporting or co-leading regulatory authority inspections and are confident maintaining inspection-readiness tools and quality risk management plans throughout the trial lifecycle.

You are experienced in working with contract research organisations and external vendors in an international, cross-functional matrix environment, and can effectively oversee third-party quality performance.

You bring strong analytical and project management capabilities, with a proven ability to identify critical-to-quality risks, define meaningful quality tolerance limits, and translate complex quality data into clear, actionable insights for diverse stakeholders.

You communicate with clarity and confidence, are skilled at influencing without authority, and can explain complex regulatory and quality topics to both technical and non-technical audiences across all levels of an organisation.

You are proactive, accountable, and committed to continuous improvement, with the ability to work independently in a complex multinational environment while actively supporting and coaching colleagues.

Department: HC-RD-DQ Clinical Quality Management

What we offer: We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We believe that this variety drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!

Apply now and become a part of a team that is dedicated to Sparking Discovery and Elevating Humanity!

Job details

Seniority
Not listed
Function
Quality
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Feltham, London, United Kingdom
Employment type
FULL_TIME

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Quality role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 1513 comparable Quality roles across 149 biopharma companies.

1513Comparable roles tracked
1378Currently active
149Companies hiring similar roles
53Countries represented

Salary context

240 of 1513 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.

This roleSubject Not listed on this posting
Lowest disclosed · QA - Stat Sort Specialist · Lilly $18/hr – $35/hr (≈ $37,482–$72,592/yr)
Highest disclosed · VP, Quality Assurance · City Therapeutics $340,000/yr – $360,000/yr
Peer group range $55,037 – $350,000 (median $130,750)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 1513 comparable roles

United States599
Ireland88
France76
Germany74
China67
India49

+ 47 more countries

Seniority mix

685 of 1513 peers have a known seniority level

Manager200
Senior180
Intern/Fellow/Postdoc92
Associate73
Principal36
Associate Director36
Director33
Senior Director28
Executive/VP7

Therapeutic area mix

1 of 1513 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Vaccines & Infectious Disease1

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.

40%similar
Boehringer Ingelheim Pirbright, United Kingdom
Same function Same country
40%similar
Boehringer Ingelheim Pirbright, United Kingdom
Same function Same country
40%similar
Seqirus UK Limited Seqirus UK - Maidenhead, United Kingdom
Same function Same country
40%similar
UCB Slough, Berkshire, United Kingdom Senior
Same function Same country
40%similar
Moderna Biotech Manufacturing UK Ltd Oxford, United Kingdom
Same function Same country
40%similar
Ipsen Biopharm Ltd Wrexham, United Kingdom
Same function Same country

Notify me about similar jobs

Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.

Or follow a whole field: get every new Quality job in the United Kingdom, and choose locations and companies.

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.

40%
QA Analyst (Pirbright, United Kingdom, Aberdeen City)
Boehringer Ingelheim · Pirbright, United Kingdom · Seniority not listed
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Senior Process Quality Excellence Specialist
UCB · Slough, Berkshire, United Kingdom · Senior
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Senior Manager GCP Quality
Regeneron UK Limited · Uxbridge1, United Kingdom · Manager
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
40%
Senior Manager GD GCP Auditing (UK)
Regeneron UK Limited · Remote, United Kingdom · Manager
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 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.