AbbVie Posted August 5, 2026

Principal Technical Lead, External Manufacturing - Drug Substance

North Chicago, IL Full-time
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AbbVie 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

Company Description

About AbbVie

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at  www.abbvie.com . Follow @abbvie on  LinkedIn,   Facebook ,  Instagram ,  X  and  YouTube .

Job Description

This role will provide technical oversight for our external manufacturing partners which encompasses drug substance and intermediate manufacturing. The Technical Lead will serve as the primary technical interface between the company and its contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs/CDMOs), ensuring manufacturing processes remain robust, reproducible, compliant, and capable of consistently delivering product that meet established quality and supply requirements.

The incumbent will provide end-to-end technical stewardship of externally manufactured processes and work cross functionally with Quality, Regulatory, External Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Procurement.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical representative to external manufacturing partners for assigned products and processes.

Maintain detailed understanding of manufacturing processes, critical process parameters, critical quality attributes, process controls, equipment capabilities and process performance.

Review manufacturing performance and identify process trends, risks, variability, and opportunities for improvement.

Provide technical leadership for manufacturing deviations, investigations, root-cause analysis, CAPAs, and process related troubleshooting.

Asses the technical impact of manufacturing changes, including equipment, raw materials, process parameters, scale, facilities, and manufacturing strategy.

Lead or support technology transfers, process scale-up, process validation (PPQ), continued process verification (CPV), and introduction of processes to new manufacturing sites.

Provide technical input to change controls, regulatory submissions, validation strategies, comparability assessments, and product lifecycle management.

Partner with Quality to ensure external manufacturing operations maintain appropriate technical and GMP standards.

Work with Supply Chain and External Manufacturing to identify and mitigate technical risks that could affect product supply.

Lead technical governance discussions with CMOs/CDMOs and ensure technical issues are appropriately escalated and resolved.

Develop and monitor process performance metrics and communicate manufacturing performance, technical risks, and improvement opportunities to internal stakeholders.

Drive process robustness, manufacturing efficiency, yield improvement, cycle-time reduction, and other continuous improvement initiatives.

Support regulatory inspections and health-authority inquiries related to externally manufactured drug substances.

Make significant contributions to project team through lab based, or other work environments, activities, as needed.

Qualifications

BS or equivalent education and extensive, typically 14+ years of experience; MS or equivalent education with typically 12+ years of experience; PhD with typically 6+ years of experience in area or scientific area of discipline.

Demonstrated experience with GMP drug-substance manufacturing, process characterization, and validation, deviations/investigations, technology transfer, change control, process monitoring, and CMO/CDMO management is highly preferred.

Comfortability in making technical decisions and influencing external partners and senior internal stakeholders without direct organizational authority.

Additional Information

Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law: ​

The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. ​

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off (vacation, holidays, sick), medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees.​

This job is eligible to participate in our long-term incentive programs. ​

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law.

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives and serving our community.  Equal Opportunity Employer/Veterans/Disabled.

US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit  https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html

US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:

https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html

Job details

Seniority
Principal
Function
Manufacturing & CMC
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
North Chicago, IL
Employment type
Full-time

How this role compares

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

We currently track 489 comparable Principal Manufacturing & CMC roles across 83 biopharma companies.

489Comparable roles tracked
461Currently active
83Companies hiring similar roles
33Countries represented

Salary context

191 of 489 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)

Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.

This roleSubject $124,500/yr – $236,500/yr
Lowest disclosed · Senior Technician Calibration - Maintenance · Mylan Technologies, Inc. $37,000/yr – $80,000/yr
Peer group range $58,500 – $288,000 (median $150,600)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 489 comparable roles

United States307
India40
Ireland22
Netherlands18
United Kingdom10
Singapore9

+ 27 more countries

Seniority mix

489 of 489 peers have a known seniority level

Senior323
Principal87
Director79

Therapeutic area mix

3 of 489 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Oncology2
Dermatology & Aesthetics1

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.

60%similar
Lilly Louisville, Colorado, United States of America Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
AbbVie North Chicago, IL Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
AbbVie Pleasanton, CA Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Lilly Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Sanofi US Services Inc. Waltham, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority Same country
60%similar
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) Tarrytown, United States Principal
Same function Same seniority 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.

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.

60%
Senior Principal Scientist - Bioanalytical Research
Lilly · Louisville, Colorado, United States of America · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Advisor / Senior Advisor, Analytical Chemistry - Antibody-Drug Conjugates
Lilly · Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Principal Supply Planning Specialist, Advanced Therapies
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc (USA) · Renss, United States · Principal
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
60%
Senior Advisor, Agentic AI Solutions and SciML Engineer
Lilly · Indianapolis, Indiana, United States of America · Principal
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.