Talent Country Lead

Make your mark for patients

We are looking for a Talent Country Lead - Canada to join our Talent & Corporate Communications team based out of our Oakville, ON Canada office (hybrid, onsite 2 days/ week)

About The Role

The Talent Country Lead provides strategic leadership for all Talent matters within the country, translating UCB’s enterprise Talent strategy into clear, prioritized local actions aligned with business needs, workforce strategy, and regulatory requirements.

Who You’ll Work With

As a core member of the Country Leadership Team, the role defines and drives the local people strategy, organizational design, and leadership capability agenda, while fostering an inclusive, ethical, and high‑performance culture. Acting as the single, integrated Talent voice to the General Manager and leadership team, the Talent Country Lead makes trade‑offs explicit and balances short‑term business priorities with long‑term capability and organizational health.

The role ensures effective Global‑to‑Local integration of Talent strategies, partners closely with Talent Operations and COEs to ensure compliant and high‑integrity practices, and uses data‑driven insights to influence key business decisions and transformation initiatives.

What You’ll Do

• Local People Strategy & Organizational Design
• As a member of the Country Leadership Team, develops a deep understanding of the business context, strategic priorities, and local ecosystem to proactively shape people and organization decisions that create value for patients.
• Translates UCB’s enterprise Talent strategy into a local Talent priorities roadmap aligned to business reality and the integrated total‑workforce model (Build / Buy / Borrow / Bot).
• Acts as the primary Talent Partner to the General Manager, providing forward‑looking Talent and organizational insights and constructively challenging assumptions to strengthen business outcomes.
• Makes trade‑offs explicit and prioritizes transparently, balancing short‑term business needs with long‑term capability, succession, and organizational health.
• Leadership & Capability Development
• Acts as a trusted advisor and coach to leaders at all levels, strengthening leadership capability, inclusion, team effectiveness, and accountability.
• Leads country focus‑population workforce and capability planning; drives annual scenario planning and ensures skills readiness aligned to future business needs.
• Identifies succession and talent bench gaps for critical roles and partners with COEs and Talent stakeholders to build sustainable pipelines and continuity.
• Culture, Change & Transformation
• Serves as a culture, change, and transformation driver, ensuring the consistent cascade of UCB’s PVS culture and the development of a strong, ethical, and compliant local micro‑culture.
• Champions inclusion initiatives and behaviors that uphold the highest ethical and compliance standards.
• Global‑to‑Local Integration & Country Voice Amplification
• Represents the country’s needs, risks, and insights in global Talent forums, ensuring effective Global‑to‑Local transfer of strategies, policies, and processes.
• Provides guidance to Global Talent Partners supporting populations based in the country, ensuring alignment with local context and requirements.
• Facilitates international mobility and cross‑border talent moves in partnership with Global Mobility and Talent stakeholders.
• Acts as Reward strategy ambassador and principles champion for leaders; ensures fair and consistent application through Reward governance in partnership with Reward and Operations teams.
• Secure the Foundation (Governance, Compliance & Risk)
• Ensures alignment between local leaders, Talent COEs, Learning, Talent Operations, and other stakeholders on capacity, sequencing, priorities, and trade‑offs to secure a strong Talent foundation.
• Maintains a strong understanding of the local legislative and regulatory environment to assess risks and implications across the employee lifecycle.
• Leads on sensitive, complex, or high‑risk employee relations and organizational risk cases (e.g., leadership counsel, major investigations, restructurings, litigation‑risk matters).
• Data, Digital & One‑Team Delivery
• Uses workforce and talent data to generate actionable country insights; partners with COEs and Local Talent Operations to improve data quality and accelerate adoption of digital and AI‑enabled Talent processes and employee self‑service.

Interested? For this role we’re looking for the following education, experience and skills

Required

• Bachelors Degree
• 6+ years in strategic talent management/ corporate human resources
• 2+ years direct leadership experience in a human resources/ talent management role

Preferred

• Prior experience within the pharmaceutical/ biosciences or related industry strongly preferred
• Demonstrates deep understanding of the business and local ecosystem, using data and insight to shape people strategy, anticipate organizational needs, and influence senior leaders. Balances strategic thinking with pragmatic, hands‑on execution.
• Experience inspiring, motivating and coaching leaders and teams, fostering high performance, accountability, and continuous learning. Identifies leadership and succession gaps and drives actions to build a strong talent bench.
• Ability to operate effectively in a global–local matrix, translating global priorities into local execution and ensuring the country perspective is represented. Facilitates international mobility and cross‑border Talent actions.

This positions reasonably anticipated base salary range is $140,000 - $180,000. The actual salary offered will take into account related knowledge, skills, experience and location among other factors and may fall outside the expected range.

Are you ready to ‘go beyond’ to create value and make your mark for patients? If this sounds like you, then we would love to hear from you!

UCB is a global biopharmaceutical company, focusing on neurology and immunology. We are over 9.000 people in all four corners of the globe, inspired by patients and driven by science.

We’ve embraced a hybrid-first approach to work, bringing teams together in local hubs to foster collaborative curiosity. Unless expressly stated in the description or precluded by the nature of the position, roles are hybrid with 40% of your time spent in the office.

Why work with us?

At UCB, we don’t just complete tasks, we create value. We aren’t afraid to push forward, collaborate, and innovate to make our mark for patients. We have a caring, supportive culture where everyone feels included, respected, and has equal opportunities to do their best work. We ‘go beyond’ to create value for our patients, and always with a human focus, whether that’s on our patients, our employees, or our planet. Working for us, you will discover a place where you can grow, and have the freedom to carve your own career path to achieve your full potential.

UCB is an equal opportunity employer. All employment decisions will be made without regard to any characteristic protected by applicable laws.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive, accessible environment, where all employees and members feel valued, respected, and supported. We are committed to meeting the accessibility needs of persons with disabilities.

If you require an accommodation for the recruitment/interview process (e.g. alternate formats of materials, accessible meeting rooms or other accommodation), please contact View email address on canada.jobradars.com and we will work with you to meet your needs.

Please note that our hiring process includes the use of artificial intelligence (AI). All final hiring decisions are made by our hiring teams.