Senior Associate, Administrative Services (m/f/d)

The greatest inventions would not be brought to market without the right project management and administrative support. Woven into every part of the organization, our Administrative teams makes sure our concepts become reality.

The Senior Administrative Assistant (B3) provides high‑level administrative and operational support to four senior leaders across Northern & Central Europe (NCE) and Mediterranean Europe & Baltics (MEDEBA) regions. This role ensures seamless coordination, proactive schedule and communication management, and effective execution of critical business priorities. The position requires exceptional professionalism, strong judgment, and the ability to manage sensitive information while collaborating across global teams.

Responsibilities:

• Proactively manage executive calendars, ensuring strategic prioritization of meetings, anticipating conflicts, and communicating schedule changes to leaders and stakeholders in a timely and professional manner.
• Serve as a primary liaison for internal and external stakeholders, ensuring clear, timely, and professional communication regarding priorities, meeting updates, and emerging issues.
• Plan, organize and coordinate team meetings and workshops (virtual and in‑person), including scheduling, logistics, preparation of materials, taking minutes and follow‑up of actions with stakeholders.
• Manage multi-leg international travel itineraries, ensuring compliance with visa, travel authorization, and company policies.
• Manage expense reporting for all assigned leaders, including providing guidance, support and proactive follow-up as required. Raise purchase orders as required.
• Manage digital collaboration platforms (SharePoint, Teams, distribution lists), ensuring accurate content, access control, and adherence to governance standards. Manage and maintain content to ensure relevance and logical filing
• Prepare, edit, and format high‑quality executive presentations and documents, ensuring accuracy, clarity, and alignment with corporate branding.
• Support leaders with proactive planning and preparing for key meetings (e.g., Leadership Team, regional and country budget reviews).  Manage schedule development, track changes across participants and follow up independently.
• Collaborate with administrative colleagues and cross‑functional teams to streamline processes, share best practices, drive continuous improvement in administrative operations to deliver high‑quality support for leaders and teams as required
• Support and coordinate special projects on behalf of the leaders or within the division as needed.

Your Profile:

• Proven experience providing an administrative support to a Leadership Team members, in an international organisation. Experience in the Pharmaceutical sector is an advantage.
• Fluency in English.
• Experience maintaining the highest levels of discretion and confidentiality in handling sensitive  organizational, finance and personnel information.
• Coordinating and performing multiple tasks while understanding the project principles and technical skills related to own work assignments.
• Work priorities and activities are reviewed with little supervision.
• Produces and completes various work assignments requiring advanced analytical ability, independent judgment, creativity and problem-solving skills.
• Advanced proficiency in Microsoft 365 applications and digital collaboration tools.
• Communication Skills must be at a level to effectively interact with Company’s executives and internal and external clients both on-site and remotely to maintain workflow.
• Ability to work well under pressure with high level of confidentiality.
• Diligence and ability to work independently and effectively with tight deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
• Attention to detail and proven ability to manage multiple, competing priorities simultaneously.
• Ability to work with very high level of ethics, integrity, sense of justice and specially confidentiality and discretion, are absolutely required.
• Team working and collaboration skills: very good relations with colleagues and high-level stakeholders.

THE COMPANY

Our Company is a leading biopharmaceutical company employing over 1,000 people in Switzerland at three sites. The company’s headquarters are in Lucerne. At the site in Zurich, the company operates a global innovation and development hub. In addition, we manufacture medicines for global clinical trials and operate a forensic laboratory in Schachen (Canton Lucerne). We conduct around 40 clinical trials annually in Switzerland. The main therapeutic areas include oncology, infectious diseases, cardiovascular and cardiometabolic diseases. We also have a broad portfolio of vaccines for the prevention of diseases in children, adolescents, and adults and we are one of the leading companies in veterinary medicine. Furthermore, we take our responsibility to the local community seriously and have been involved for many years in initiatives such as the «Trendtage Gesundheit Luzern» and the «Alliance Health Competence». 

One Roof is our new Swiss headquarters in Lucerne designed to bring teams together and make collaboration easier. Across 15,000 m² of modern office space, we unite colleagues from national, regional and global functions within different functions under one roof to strengthen cross‑functional cooperation and a ONE Team culture. The site is centrally located, a short walk from Lucerne train station, supporting sustainable commuting.

Required Skills:

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.