Since 1999, our client has worked exclusively for Pharma and Life Science. Over 35,000 projects, more than one million participants, and customers who return at a rate of 75 to 80 percent form the foundation. They are currently building the kind of agency that does not yet exist in this form: impact as a promise, stringency as a signature.

Your Role
You lead the entire project business and carry full responsibility for results. Customers, team, and numbers come together under your leadership. You shape this area into what it is meant to be: the most high-performing part of the company. You are not an event manager. You understand events as a tool, not as an end in themselves. When a client requests a conference, your first question is what should be different afterwards?

Your Tasks
• Leadership and further development of the project business with full profit-and-loss responsibility
• Steering a portfolio of parallel projects with clear cadence and binding commitments
• Robust calculation, ongoing commercial steering, and securing contribution margins
• Building lean processes, clear roles, and standards that strengthen both quality and margin
• Consulting our clients at eye level, including with senior decision-makers
• Negotiating offers, framework agreements, and change requests
• Leading, developing, and retaining the project team

What You Bring
• Several years of experience in Pharma or Life Science, with customer contact and commercial exposure —e.g., from event management in a pharma company or from a marketing or sales role
• Reliable project management across many parallel initiatives
• Experience in leading teams
• Confidence in commercial thinking—from calculation to steering to renegotiation
• Negotiation-strong, eloquent, and confident presence
• A sense for when an event moves people and when it merely takes place
• Very good German and English

How You Work
You lead through clarity and presence. Your team knows where it stands, and clients sense that someone has the wheel firmly in hand. You make decisions even under pressure and stand by them afterwards. You think quickly and act pragmatically. You identify the core of a task early and find the path that truly works—not the one that looks most elegant. You use creativity as a tool for solving problems. Your baseline tone is a positive can-do. You look for the next step rather than the reason something won’t work, and you bring others along because your confidence comes from competence.

What We Offer You
• A shaping role with real result responsibility and short decision paths
• A company with over 25 years of substance and the backing of a global healthcare network
• A positioning that goes beyond pure execution, with methodology and science at its core
• A team that takes quality seriously, and a location in the heart of Cologne. We are not looking for project administration. We are looking for an entrepreneurial personality to lead this business.

paul.sampson@sampsoneurope.com