Lead Counsel, Southeast Asia and India

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Job Description

About the Role

The Lead Counsel, Southeast Asia and India serves as the senior strategic legal partner for one of the most operationally complex clusters within the Intercontinental area. This role leads and develops a geographically dispersed team of lawyers across India, Thailand, and Vietnam, each with sophisticated healthcare systems and evolving regulatory frameworks. Other countries in scope include Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

The role operates at the intersection of legal, business, and strategy, shaping decision-making at both cluster and area level, and contributing to governance, risk appetite, and strategic prioritization.

In addition to leading the legal team at a cluster level, the Lead Counsel operates in a player/coach model, directly overseeing legal support for at least one country within the cluster.

The role plays a critical role in shaping the legal strategy for key commercial and manufacturing partnerships, commercialization of strategically important vaccine portfolio, and the implementation of Takeda’s Global Capability Model (GCM), with direct impact on business growth and operating model transformation.

The Lead Counsel ensures high-quality, business-aligned legal support by balancing regional consistency with market-specific nuance, simplifying complex issues for diverse stakeholders, and enabling compliant, efficient execution of Takeda’s strategic priorities.

The Lead Counsel is accountable not only for legal outcomes, but also for building long-term legal capability, driving transformation, and ensuring alignment with enterprise priorities across the region. By proactively managing risk, anticipating changes in legal and healthcare landscapes, and strengthening collaboration across markets, the Lead Counsel contributes to enterprise-wide legal strategy and capability development.

How you will contribute

• Shapes and drives cluster legal strategy aligned with enterprise priorities, ensuring consistency and scalability across markets.
• Acts as a trusted advisor to senior business leadership, influencing strategic decisions, market access approaches, and risk appetite.
• Provides commercially grounded, forward-looking strategic legal guidance that enables sound decision-making across highly diverse and complex markets.
• Defines regional risk strategy by proactively identifying, assessing, and managing legal and regulatory risks across multiple jurisdictions
• Represents the cluster in cross-cluster and global legal initiatives, contributing to enterprise-wide frameworks, policies, and ways of working.
• Provides legal support for the implementation of the Global Capability Model (GCM), driving efficiency and operating model evolution
• Leads legal strategy for commercial and manufacturing partnerships, including vaccine commercialization and related supply models
• Navigates diverse legal systems, regulatory environments, and cultural contexts with a global mindset, fostering effective collaboration across Southeastern Asia and India
• Ensures high-quality, business-aligned legal support by balancing cluster consistency with market-specific nuance
• Simplifies complexity and communicates clearly across senior stakeholders, functions, and geographies, enabling confident and timely decision-making
• Leads, develops, and inspires a geographically dispersed team of legal professionals, fostering a high-performing, collaborative, and growth-oriented culture
• Drives continuous improvement, leads teams through change with resilience, and strengthens organizational capability across the region
• Contributes to cross-regional and enterprise legal strategy by bringing insights from highly complex and fast-evolving markets

Skills

• Juris Doctor (JD) degree and active legal license in India or another common law jurisdiction. 
• Advanced professional training in pharmaceutical law from a highly regarded law firm. 
• Extensive post-qualification legal experience (typically 10+ years) advising on complex legal issues, including access, regulatory, compliance, litigation and corporate matters within the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries.
• Extensive experience in working in Southeast Asia and India.
• Experience in managing attorneys and legal professionals.

Locations

Mumbai, India

Worker Type

Employee

Worker Sub-Type

Regular

Time Type

Full time