Job Summary
This role will be a senior counsel advising the APAC commercial team on matters of commercial law across APAC, with a focus on China. The role will be a senior member of the team in China and will also be a senior member of the trade compliance team managed from the UK. The role will provide pragmatic legal advice on a broad range of transactions to support the continued growth and expansion of Oxford Nanopore in APAC. The role will work closely with the Leadership, Business Manager, China, Finance, and HR on broad range of needs from sales and marketing agreements in APAC, privacy and cybersecurity policies, risk mitigation to supporting IP acquisition and potential commercial or IP litigation in China.
Responsible for drafting, negotiation and execution of sales related commercial contracts and other customer-orientated agreements. Involves independent judgement and analysis of contracts, including identification of legal and business- related issues and their resolution.
Oxford Nanopore’s sequencing technology has evolved substantially over recent years and is now both competitive on traditional market metrics, as well as offering disruptive features (real-time, scalability, adaptive sampling, methylation, and direct RNA). These breakthrough features can lead to a true reshaping of the market of genomic analysis. To reflect the development of the technology, Oxford Nanopore is driving an expansion of the customer base beyond a research users, to applied industrial, clinical and biopharma users.
Key Duties & Responsibilities:
- Delivery of legal services in APAC
- Review moderate to complex solicitations and work closely with the sales organization to prepare specialized and/or non-routine responses to requests for proposals, bids, tenders and contracts
- Analyze and negotiate contract requirements, special provisions and terms and conditions to align with company standards and ensure compliance with corporate business strategy, policies and commercial procedures
- Review, draft and negotiate bespoke agreements for large opportunities and liaise with key stakeholders to create executive summary to be sent for approval to the executive team
- Review, draft and negotiate business development agreements.
- Help maintain APAC commercial legal templates.
- Prepare and send approval requests to SMEs in accordance with internal escalation processes.
- Prepare signature memo with all relevant approvals and routes for signature.
- File all fully executed agreements and negotiate any related amendment.
- Serve as a focal point for communication with finance and commercial teams on APAC customer contracts.
- Advise and support commercial and operations teams with respect to commercial contracting/sales in APAC including close working with Business Manager, China, contract managers and be part of negotiation escalation team
- Advise and support commercial and operations teams in APAC, including working alongside leadership with respect to establishment of contracting norms, and part of negotiation escalation team
- Support litigation in APAC in consultation with IP and Leadership
- Support export and trade compliance in China in coordination with local team in China and trade compliance team in the UK
- Help with corporate secretarial matters in APAC
- Advise and support leadership and operations teams alongside General Counsel with real property agreements in APAC
- Work with leadership and regulatory team in the UK in establishing and maintaining compliance with APAC regulations with respect to manufacture and marketing of diagnostic products
- Work with the General Counsel to maintain the currency and training on the internal governance and compliance policies for the APAC subsidiaries, implementing changes in accordance with corporate governance code including processes to demonstrated ONT’s board compliance regarding their duties to both internal and external stakeholders.
- Assuring promotional materials and activities comply with all relevant rules and laws in APAC
- Coordinate, in consultation with the General Counsel and leadership, inbound and outbound interactions with government regulators in APAC.
- Advise on compliance with all laws and areas of regulatory compliance and risk for all operating areas applicable to APAC operations, including any necessary policy modifications to ensure compliance, participating in the development, and drafting of policies.
PERSON SPECIFICATION Essential Qualifications/ Education
- Qualified corporate and/or commercial lawyer with at least 3 years PQE
- Ideally with China legal degree with a plus for a UK or US legal LLM
- Experience supporting commercial contracting in the life sciences or technology sectors
- Ideally, at least one year’s experience in a major law firm and one year’s experience in-house
Knowledge/Skills/
Abilities
- Strong written and oral communication skills –ideally in English and Mandarin
- Effective leadership and interpersonal skills
Requirements
- A self-starter with the ability to work independently and in a team and manage numerous matters and competing priorities effectively.
- Enthusiasm for taking on new responsibilities, even if outside areas of expertise
- Able to work in extremely fast-paced environment, collaboratively, and autonomously
- Expected to work autonomously and take ownership
- High level of accuracy and attention to detail.
- Able to thrive with the space and responsibility to solve problems and make the right decisions
- A team player who operates best without lots of bureaucracy and gets things done
- Logical approach towards work. Not afraid to make mistakes but will use data and logic to backup decisions and improve understanding
- You are our mission to improve people’s relationship with their money
- Open minded and willing to take on new challenges
- Willingness and ability to travel
#LI-MW1
Skills Required
- Qualified corporate and/or commercial lawyer with at least 3 years PQE
- Experience supporting commercial contracting in the life sciences or technology sectors
- Strong written and oral communication skills - ideally in English and Mandarin
- Ideally with China legal degree
- Plus for a UK or US legal LLM
- At least one year's experience in a major law firm
- One year's experience in-house
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Oxford Nanopore Technologies and has not been reviewed or approved by Oxford Nanopore Technologies.
-
Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered good to above average across many roles, with employer-provided ranges visible for several U.S. commercial and applications positions and company materials emphasizing market‑competitive base pay. Commercial and some senior technical posts, particularly in the U.S., are positioned as competitive and often paired with strong variable components.
-
Equity Value & Accessibility — All‑employee share plans in the UK and a U.S. employee stock purchase plan indicate broad access to equity as part of total reward. Company communications highlight attractive bonus and share plans that add meaningful upside beyond base pay.
-
Healthcare Strength — U.S. roles indicate strong health insurance and core protections, while official materials and country overviews reference private medical coverage and wellbeing support. These elements position the health package as a notable strength alongside cash compensation.
Oxford Nanopore Technologies Insights
What We Do
Our goal is to enable the analysis of anything, anywhere, by anyone. We have developed the world’s first and only nanopore DNA and RNA sequencing platform. It’s a new generation of sequencing technology — the only one to offer: scalability to portable or ultra-high throughput formats, real-time data delivery, and the ability to elucidate rich biological data. We are aiming to disrupt the way that biological analyses are currently performed, and open up new applications that have a profound, positive impact on society. Our devices offer real-time analysis, for rapid insights, in fully scalable formats — from pocket to population scale — and the technology is being used in more than 100 countries worldwide. Founded in 2005 as a spin-out from the University of Oxford, the company now employs more than 600 people from multiple disciplines including nanopore science, molecular biology and applications, informatics, engineering, electronics, manufacturing and commercialisation. The management team, led by CEO Dr Gordon Sanghera, has a track record of delivering disruptive technologies to the market.
