Lead Recruiter – Regulatory & Clinical (CRO/Pharma)

Recruitment Delivery 

• Lead the full recruitment lifecycle for specialised Regulatory and Clinical roles globally, including Clinical Trial Management, Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance, Medical Writing, and related disciplines. 

• Drive candidate attraction using specialist channels beyond LinkedIn — clinical trial registries, professional associations, and targeted direct sourcing strategies. 

• Apply Life Sciences expertise to rigorously create assessment frameworks that accurately assess candidates and freelancers against technical competency frameworks (GCP, ICH guidelines, regulatory submissions) and project-specific requirements. 

• Contribute directly to recruitment delivery while maintaining strategic oversight of your team’s output and partner performance. 

• Monitor hiring pipelines, identify risks early, and proactively adjust recruitment approaches to protect delivery against shifting project demands. 

Team & Partner Management 

• Provide daily guidance, coaching, and direction to a small team comprising recruiters and partner management professionals, ensuring clear priorities and consistent delivery standards. 

• Manage team capacity and allocate resources to ensure all global recruitment requirements are met within defined timelines and quality expectations. 

• Set and maintain quality standards for candidate profiles, evidence documentation, and stakeholder submissions. 

• Foster a collaborative, high-performing team culture aligned with Welocalize’s values. 

• Ensuring compliance, onboarding integrity, and seamless integration into the CRO/Pharma environment. 

• Hold partners accountable to agreed SLAs and performance KPIs, and identify new strategic partners to expand global reach and specialist capability. 

Stakeholder Collaboration 

• Build trusted partnerships with internal stakeholders, adapting communication style and approach to meet the cultural expectations and working norms of diverse regional markets, to deeply understand hiring needs, domain nuances, and quality thresholds for each subject area. 

• Act as the primary talent interface for international Clinical Trial and Regulatory programs, ensuring recruitment activity aligns to project milestones and commercial timelines. 

• Translate stakeholder requirements into precise recruitment briefs and provide market intelligence to support decision-making at all levels. 

Data, Automation & Continuous Improvement 

• Maintain and optimise advanced Lever ATS configurations, including pipeline workflow automation, reporting dashboards, structured interview processes, and partner management integrations. 

• Provide regular, data-driven reporting to leadership covering time-to-fill, pipeline health, salary benchmarking, market trends, and team performance metrics. 

• Identify and assess automation opportunities across the recruitment function; evaluate feasibility and impact before implementation to ensure improvements are meaningful and sustainable. 

• Own recruitment metrics and translate KPI performance into actionable insights, process improvements, and clear recommendations for leadership. 

Partner Management 

• Lead and manage the vendor management team, providing clear direction, performance oversight, and structured accountability across all vendor-related activities. 

• Oversee pricing activities for specialist and freelance vendor engagements, ensuring rate structures are competitive, commercially sound, and consistently applied across markets. 

• Manage vendor support operations, ensuring timely resolution of issues, clear escalation pathways, and a high standard of service to both internal stakeholders and external vendors. 

• Champion brand experience across all vendor-facing touchpoints – ensuring that communication, onboarding materials, and engagement practices reflect Welocalize’s brand standards and values. 

• Collaborate with internal stakeholders to align vendor pricing and support frameworks with project budgets, delivery requirements, and long-term sourcing strategy. 

Skills and Requirements 

Essential 

• Minimum 7 years of talent acquisition experience, with a minimum of 3 years specifically in Life Sciences, CRO, and/or Pharma industries and demonstrable exposure to Clinical Trials, Regulatory Affairs, and/or Pharmacovigilance recruitment. 

• Extensive experience in Life Sciences including GCP (Good Clinical Practice) and ICH (International Council for Harmonisation) frameworks, regulatory submission processes, and the global clinical markets. 

• Experience creating and deploying assessment frameworks for these competencies 

• Experience managing external partner relationships, including negotiation, relationship management, and strategic partner evaluation. 

• Advanced working knowledge of Lever ATS, including pipeline automation, structured reporting, workflow configuration, and integration management. 

• Familiarity with client audits for regulatory requirements, including supporting audit readiness within a CRO or Pharma recruitment context. 

• Proven experience managing or mentoring a small team, with the ability to guide, coach, and develop colleagues in day-to-day delivery. 

• Excellent stakeholder management skills, with a demonstrated ability to work effectively across regions, functions, and cultural contexts. 

Desirable 

• Experience with recruitment automation and AI-assisted sourcing tools; ability to assess where automation is appropriate vs. where expert human judgement must prevail. 

• Background in freelance, contractor, or partner talent models. 

• Experience with multilingual hiring across multiple regional markets. 

• Professional affiliations across the recruitment function 

• Data-oriented mindset with a track record of translating recruitment metrics and market intelligence into meaningful process improvements and business insights. 

• Experience with workflow automation tools and a pragmatic approach to assessing where automation adds genuine value.