Site Head or VP Operations, biotech manufacturing
Biotech · Netherlands · Permanent
General management of a GMP manufacturing site or a company's operations function: people, output, compliance and the investment case, reporting to a CEO or a group operations leader. Retained executive searches are confidential and not listed as live vacancies; this is the shape of the ones we run.
Representative brief. This is the shape of a mandate we are regularly asked to fill, written from recent engagements with the identifying details removed. It is not a live vacancy.
Why this brief is here
Executive searches at Axeleon are retained and confidential; the client is never named in public, and most candidates are approached directly. Two of the searches on our executive search page, a site head for a contract manufacturer and a VP Operations for a biotech, had the shape described here. If you are a senior operations leader who would want to hear about the next one, register with the form on this page; that is how these conversations start, well before a search is formally opened.
The role
You run the operation. In a site-head version, that is a single GMP manufacturing site with production, engineering, supply chain, quality and EHS reporting to you, and full accountability for output, compliance, cost and the people on it. In a VP Operations version, it is the company’s manufacturing and supply function across one or more sites, with the CMC and technical-operations interfaces that come with a product moving from clinical to commercial supply.
Either way, the board’s question is the same: can this person deliver the volume the business plan assumes, keep the site inspection-ready while doing so, and build a leadership team that does not depend on them being in the building.
The environment
Two versions of this brief recur. One is a CDMO or established manufacturer with a site that needs a new leader: the previous one has left or is being moved on, a capacity expansion is under way, and the client wants someone who has run a site through growth and an inspection at the same time. The other is a clinical-stage or newly commercial biotech whose product is about to need reliable supply, where the operations function has to be built from a small technical team into something that can carry a launch.
Sites are in the Netherlands, most often in the Leiden, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Groningen clusters, with reporting lines that can sit in the Netherlands, elsewhere in Europe or in the US.
What we look for
- Fifteen or more years in life sciences operations, with a track record of running a GMP site or a multi-site operations function, not only a department within one.
- Experience of at least one significant change under your leadership: a capacity expansion, a technology transfer, a turnaround after inspection findings, or a build from clinical to commercial supply.
- Direct exposure to inspections and to the board-level consequences of quality decisions.
- The ability to hire and develop a leadership team, with references who will say so.
- Fluent English; Dutch is an advantage where the site’s workforce and the inspectorate are Dutch, and never a substitute for the track record.
Practical
Permanent, senior leadership team or executive level, on-site presence expected. The client’s search is retained; the twelve-week method on our executive search page is the process you would be part of. Everything you tell us stays between you and Russell until you decide otherwise.