Senior Partner – Transformation — Sterile Manufacturing Network

The mandate

A specialist advisory firm has supported multiple medical-device clients, usually through separate quality, operations and programme-management teams. Clients now ask for an integrated answer: how to strengthen product and quality systems, ensure reliable supply and redesign the operating model without creating a permanent overhead structure. The firm has technical depth, but delivery quality varies depending on which partner originates the work and whether accountability extends beyond the plan.

Several recent pursuits exposed the gap. Regulators and boards were unconvinced by transformation roadmaps that did not start from device and process evidence. Plant teams resisted layers of reporting that duplicated quality systems. Benefit cases assumed rapid productivity recovery before validation, investigation and training constraints were understood. The regional council wants a senior partner able to lead from containment through sustainable operations and to challenge both commercial optimism and excessive control activity.

The Senior Partner – Transformation will own the sterile-network and remediation offer and lead its most consequential engagements. The practice perimeter includes approximately 450 professionals and material affiliates across quality, engineering, supply, data, finance and organisation. The partner must assemble small, credible teams, remain present through difficult decisions and measure whether the client’s own leaders can sustain the result.

The role is on site in Zurich and reports to the Global Managing Partner and regional partner council. It is advisory in structure with substantial European and international travel. Independence and conflict governance are critical where the firm may assess, remediate and later provide assurance over connected work.

Why this seat is open

This is a new position created after the council combined previously separate transformation and remediation investments. Existing quality and operations partners retain their standing. The firm seeks an external leader because the integrated proposition requires direct sterile-product and board experience that is not concentrated in one current partner.

What you will own

• Define the sterile-network transformation offer from containment and risk assessment through validated control, supply recovery, operating redesign and programme exit.
• Originate and lead board-level engagements, maintaining personal accountability through implementation rather than transferring the work after diagnostic.
• Direct teams across an approximately 450-person professional and affiliate perimeter, with one decision model and clear clinical, quality, operations and financial ownership.
• Establish evidence-led diagnostics covering product risk, process capability, contamination control, supplier dependency, deviation flow, release, capacity and workforce.
• Design governance that protects independent quality and medical authority while removing duplicate review and programme reporting that does not improve control.
• Reconcile remediation cost, supply, capital and benefit cases to technical and validation constraints before clients commit publicly or financially.
• Manage independence where advisory, implementation and assurance roles overlap, including separation, external review or refusal where safeguards are inadequate.
• Develop partners and technical leaders who can originate and deliver, and create reusable methods without exposing client data or flattening category differences.

The first 12 months

• Days 1–90: Review live and recent engagements, failures and client feedback. Define the integrated proposition and independence boundaries and select one lighthouse programme where quality and supply plans are currently disconnected. Stabilise any active assignment whose reporting obscures a material operating risk.
• Months 4–9: Build the core team and review forum, win additional work with explicit outcome and exit measures and implement the lighthouse recovery. Introduce evidence and benefit controls that connect remediation closure to process stability and supply rather than task completion.
• Months 10–12: Demonstrate a sustained client outcome, a profitable qualified pipeline and assignments led successfully by other partners. Complete independent quality reviews, retire weak service variants and agree the next investment and succession plan with the council.

What the board will measure

• Client product and process risks closed with objective evidence and sustained operating performance, not programme status alone.
• Supply, cost and productivity recovery aligned to validation and quality constraints and independently reconciled to baselines.
• Repeat and referral work arising from delivered outcomes, with acceptable client and originating-partner concentration.
• Engagement quality and independence, including issues escalated, work redesigned and assurance conflicts avoided.
• Practice margin reflecting real specialist effort and no hidden dependence on unfunded affiliates or client resources.
• Partner and expert bench able to originate and lead work without permanent dependence on the Senior Partner.

The person

You are a senior partner, global transformation or remediation leader, quality-and-operations executive or sterile-network leader with at least 28 years of experience. You have carried a product-safety or quality remediation through containment, regulator interaction, validated change and programme exit. You have led at least 300 professionals or client employees and owned a practice, programme or P&L of at least CHF 200 million.

You understand sterile-device operations sufficiently to challenge contamination control, sterilisation, packaging, supplier and release assumptions. You can distinguish interim containment from stable process control and know why a closed observation does not by itself prove operating recovery. You have balanced patient and hospital continuity with independent quality decisions.

The firm will consider established advisers, professional-services partners and senior industry executives with credible external advisory and origination experience. Consultants must show implementation and technical accountability. Operators must show they can guide several clients without taking line authority or relying on their former organisation’s templates.

The role is based in Zurich with significant client-site travel. Candidates must accept partnership economics, independent review and obligations to develop successors. Restricted client, regulator or employer information must not be brought into the process.

Compensation and terms

The expected base or drawings range is CHF 500,000–700,000, with annual incentive and long-term participation under partnership terms. Measures will combine client outcomes, quality, profitable growth, independent judgement and successor development. Capital participation, deferred awards, notice and restrictions will be discussed during reciprocal diligence.

Confidentiality

The firm, clients, products, regulator matters and live engagements are confidential. Identifying material will be released only after fit and reciprocal protections are established. Candidates must not disclose restricted information or approach clients connected to a current mandate.

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