Contracts Manager/Senior Contracts Manager

The company is a clinical-stage oncology company listed on Nasdaq that recently raised $200M in funding. With a strong scientific foundation and a founding team that includes the discoverer of our target pathway, we are advancing PIKTOR, a multi-node PI3K/AKT/mTOR inhibitor program, toward multiple near-term milestones. We are a small, focused team where every person has direct impact — united by a shared commitment to care deeply, create boldly, and never stop learning.

We are looking for a highly self-motivated Contracts Manager / Senior Contracts Manager to join our Legal team as the company's first in-house contracts professional. The Contracts Manager will negotiate and manage the company's agreements end to end: drafting, redlining, and negotiating directly with counterparties, then getting each deal approved, signed, filed, and tracked. This position will collaborate with every function in the company, particularly Clinical and CMC, to complete their agreements quickly and well. This is a unique opportunity to join our team and help build a new generation of therapeutic interventions for cancer.

This role spans both sides of contract work. The first is negotiation: understanding which terms matter in a biotech agreement, protecting the company's interests in areas such as intellectual property, confidentiality, and data, and resolving the remaining points efficiently. The second is the operation around it: the process, the Ironclad repository, the playbooks, and the template library, so obtaining a contract at the company is simple. We place a premium on judgment and practicality: moving agreements to signature quickly, focusing negotiation on the terms that carry real risk or value, and avoiding unnecessary revisions. A law degree is not required; substantial experience negotiating biotech agreements is. We will level the role as Contracts Manager or Senior Contracts Manager depending on experience.

Reports to: General Counsel

Location: Remote (U.S.)

Responsibilities

• Draft, redline, and negotiate the company's agreements directly with counterparties: CDAs, consulting agreements, MSAs and SOWs, vendor and CRO agreements, clinical trial agreements, CMC and supply agreements, MTAs, and others as they arise.

• Apply our playbooks with judgment: hold firm on intellectual property, confidentiality, data, and other terms that carry real risk; resolve lower stakes points efficiently; escalate to the General Counsel when a position warrants it.

• Move agreements to signature quickly. Own the timeline on every agreement, keep requesters informed, and remove the friction that slows contracts down.

• Be the front door for contracts across the company. Triage requests, run with what you can, and route the rest.

• Build and maintain the contract playbooks: our positions and fallbacks by agreement type, who reviews and approves what, and when a matter goes to the General Counsel or to outside counsel.

• Route approvals, including Finance, manage signature, file executed agreements in Ironclad with correct metadata, and track renewals, expirations, and obligations.

• Own the contract repository: every executed agreement in Ironclad, organized, complete, and accessible to the right people.

• Administer Ironclad: workflows, templates, metadata, permissions, and user training. Keep it easy for employees to find what they need.

• Rebuild the company's contracting process so that anyone who needs a contract knows exactly what to do. Learn our AI-assisted intake tool, test it, and tune it until it works.

• Maintain the template library, add agreement types as needed, and keep templates and playbooks current with best practice.

• Coordinate outside counsel and our consultant bench on specialist questions.

• Use and improve our AI tools and bring ideas for doing this work better.

• As contract volume allows, take on legal operations work: vendor review, employee training on contracting, and process improvement.

Requirements

• 5+ years negotiating and managing contracts at a biotech or pharmaceutical company, or at a law firm or CRO serving them, with most of your career in life sciences.

• Direct, hands-on experience negotiating the standard biotech agreement set with counterparties, not just routing documents for others to negotiate.

• Practical judgment: a record of closing agreements quickly, protecting the terms that matter, and resolving lower-stakes points without unnecessary back-and-forth.

• Experience administering a contract lifecycle management system, not just using one.

• A track record of owning the administrative side of contracting (signatures, filing, tracking) with the organizational discipline and service mindset that takes.

• Active, current use of AI tools in your work, and an appetite to go deeper.

• Preferred: Ironclad Signature or Docusign experience; public-company experience; having built playbooks or a template library or led a CLM implementation; exposure to clinical operations contracting; broader legal operations experience.

• A paralegal certificate or law degree is welcome but not required.

Compensation Range: $118,000 - $160,000 (actual compensation may vary based on experience, qualifications and location)

Working at the company

Benefits

• Competitive salary and equity in a well-funded, clinical-stage biotech

• 100% remote work and flexible schedule

• Health, dental, and vision for you and your dependents

• Flexible time off

• Generous parental leave

• Traditional and Roth 401k

• Mission oriented, remote first culture

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

All offers of employment are contingent upon satisfactory completion of a background check and verification of eligibility to work in the United States.