APAC Privacy Officer

Job Description

Biogen has one of the most exciting pipelines in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry.  We have almost 8,000 employees in more than 30 countries with a wide variety of skills and backgrounds.  We foster a culture of excellence by emphasising collaboration, innovation, diversity, recognition and work-life balance. Teams across diverse business areas work together to discover, manufacture and market therapies for patients around the world.

The Global Privacy Office is part of the Privacy, Risk and Governance function and provides direction and support to company employees and partners to ensure compliance with various regulatory requirements related to data protection and privacy, and adherence to industry best practices, through the development of policies and standards, training and awareness, consultative services, and ongoing monitoring.  

Biogen is looking for an APAC Privacy Officer to be located at its affiliate in Hong Kong.  The individual will assist the Chief Privacy Officer in operationalizing the global privacy program, with a focus on creating the tools, policies and training needed to enable employees and partners to appropriately and responsibly handle personal data when part of their business activities. This position is specifically oriented to support the Global Privacy Office, taking into account the regional requirements of privacy regulations in our Asia-Pacific affiliate locations, including but not limited to South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Key Responsibilities

• Privacy Program Management – With the Chief Privacy officer, ensure the company is executing the global privacy program in compliance with regional sectoral and jurisdictional regulations.  This includes SOP development, governance and communication/ training to employees, being a resource for functional and affiliate employees and advising on data protectionand data handling standards, etc. Inform and/ or develop the global privacy program as appropriate/ directed.  
• Privacy by Design – Provide guidance on complex use cases involving personally identifiable information and other data, taking into account consent, notice, use, transparency and systems controls. Work with IT, Security and other teams to ensure incorporation of privacy by design approach into Biogen data processing procedures.
• Business Consultation - Work with business partners to understand new use cases and operational procedures for new business scenarios involving internal or external data handling, with particular focus on R&D and commercial activities.
• Regional Compliance - Assist the Chief Privacy Officer in implementing measures throughout the world to ensure compliance with local laws.
• Monitoring and Compliance – Help monitor country specific regulatory activities to ensure awareness of changes in regulatory environment globally.
• Audit and Assess - Support ongoing measurement and auditing on overall effectiveness of the Privacy office and execution of privacy policies and standards, both internally and by third party vendors.

Qualifications

At Biogen, we focus not only on results, but also on how we achieve our success.  As part of our Culture of Excellence, we stress the value of collaboration as we strive to Care Deeply, Work Fearlessly, and Change Lives.  The successful candidate will demonstrate the following qualities:

• Demonstrated ability delivering results and advancing Privacy program maturity.
• Excellent organizational skills.
• Deep understanding of personal data and broad knowledge of data across the business.  Ideally, this would be in the Biotech or Pharmaceutical industry, but relevant experience from other consumer/ regulated industries will also be considered.
• Technical aptitude and understanding of IT systems and their connection to data collection and processing.
• Keenly-developed business partnering and collaboration skills, adept at establishing and sustaining effective working relationships, both within and between departments.
• Ability to operate effectively in a matrixed environment: Building and managing peer and management-level relationships through achievement of results, accountable to schedule, and allocation of resources and meeting customer needs. Comfortable working in a global organization.
• Solution and results oriented.
• Excellent people skills, a team player.
• Excellent communication skills and an ability to explain complex concepts in simple ways.
• Project management skills with the ability to keep multiple projects moving forward simultaneously.

We would expect successful candidate to have both relevant experience and potential for further growth.  We anticipate successful candidates will have:

• Minimum of bachelor degree, masters or law degree.
• 10 years’ experience in jobs of increasing responsibility, 6+ years of related experience in legal or data-driven roles and 6+ years of experience in APAC region privacy role preferred.
• Experience working in the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industry preferred.
• Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean and/or Japanese language proficiency preferred.
• CIPP, CIPT and/or CIPM certification preferred.