P

Pfizer

Makes cancer drugs, vaccines and other medicines

Vaccines Medical Affairs Scientist

Full-Time
No salary listed
Mid
Bachelor's, Master's, PhD, MD
Tokyo, Japan
Hybrid
Biology & Biotech

About the job

Requirements
  • A four-year university undergraduate degree and a master's degree in life science, or a pharmacist qualification with a four-year degree and a master's degree or equivalent life science research experience, or a six-year university degree with a pharmacist qualification, or qualification as a veterinarian, dentist, or MD.
  • Medical or pharmaceutical expert knowledge of the therapeutic disease area and products.
  • Ability to communicate appropriately and build relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
  • Ability to collaborate effectively with teams and across functions, demonstrating Pfizer's Values & Behaviors and agility to learn from others.
  • Ability to conduct medical discussions with relevant departments and external healthcare professionals.
  • Understanding of compliance and relevant laws and regulations in the pharmaceutical industry, and advocacy for appropriate product use.
  • Knowledge and understanding of the internal organization structure, key stakeholders, and strategies.
  • Ability to quickly acquire necessary medical and scientific knowledge and skills through self-learning.
  • Ability to understand written and spoken English and Japanese in the assigned therapeutic disease area and for scientific interactions.
  • Minimum TOEIC score of 730.
Responsibilities
  • Serve as Pfizer Japan's medical scientific point of contact for healthcare professionals, medical societies, regulators, academia, and other external stakeholders.
  • Provide medical and scientific leadership and expertise, maintaining high scientific standards in internal and external activities.
  • Develop local medical plans aligned with global medical plans to address local unmet medical needs and data gaps, and contribute to local medical strategies and lifecycle clinical plans for inline and pipeline vaccines.
  • Provide and exchange medical and scientific information with medical facilities and external stakeholders, contributing to medical strategy decisions for assigned products and their safe, proper, and effective use.
  • Drive understanding of disease burden and product medical attributes to support safe and efficacious product use.
  • Contribute to department and team goals, participate as a core member in cross-organizational projects, and provide guidance to deliver results.
  • Identify unmet medical needs and healthcare disparities, and execute customer-facing medical activities, including unbiased scientific communication, medical advisory board meetings, educational seminars, data-generation initiatives, medical-material creation, and scientific input.
  • Create activity plans with senior medical management to address unmet needs and data gaps.
  • Develop the customer-facing portion of medical plans to establish collaborative scientific relationships with stakeholders.
  • Provide subject-matter expertise and high-quality scientific exchange, bringing stakeholder insights into the organization to shape strategy.
  • Collaborate with healthcare professionals, medical societies, academia, and other stakeholders as a scientific expert.
  • Establish collaborative scientific relationships through non-promotional scientific exchanges, including discussion of current research papers and follow-up on academic conference presentations.
  • Maintain a stakeholder map of relevant healthcare professionals, medical societies, and other external stakeholders, and communicate with them at an expert level.
  • Follow up on clinical investigator-sponsored research and medical grants in compliance with Pfizer policies.
  • Acquire and maintain current medical and pharmaceutical information in the assigned area to identify unmet needs and support medical strategy.
  • Share customer insights with internal and external stakeholders to support evidence generation and cross-functional partnership.
  • Apply health-literacy and cultural-awareness principles to patient-centered medical communications and deliverables.
  • Build peer-to-peer scientific relationships with leading healthcare professionals and specialists, including non-traditional partners and key decision makers.
  • Maintain and enhance cross-business-unit alignment on metrics.
  • Collect and analyze information and insights before meetings to provide medical and scientific expertise to stakeholders and healthcare professionals.
  • Provide expert and healthcare-professional feedback on product lifecycle strategies to relevant company divisions and departments.
  • Share medical and scientific information and insights appropriately with marketing colleagues to support brand-plan development.
  • Provide scientific input for scientific meetings and materials.
  • Provide medical education programs with medical societies or relevant stakeholders.
  • Provide accurate, high-quality, unbiased medical information to healthcare professionals and external experts, including handling unsolicited medical requests.
  • Provide scientific insight and support to field- and head-office-based commercial colleagues.
  • Collaborate with in-country and above-country cross-functional teams to develop impactful, compliant promotional and non-promotional materials.
  • Collect and share insights from healthcare professionals and stakeholders to inform medical strategy and business opportunities.
  • Manage local advisory boards to gather customer insights.
  • Observe the Medical Affairs code of conduct and company regulations, communicate with relevant departments, and exercise leadership in Pfizer Japan.
  • Conduct activities in compliance with Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare guidelines for prescription drug sales information activities and all applicable policies, guidelines, and regulations.
  • Observe applicable laws, regulations, and Pfizer policy for all Pfizer products, and gather and report safety information; attend training on assigned safety-reporting obligations as appropriate.
Desired Qualifications
  • A medical degree with clinical experience; board certification is preferred.
  • A PhD in Life Science.
  • Medical Affairs or clinical development experience and/or research experience.
  • Scientific publication experience.

About the company

Pfizer discovers, makes, and sells prescription medicines and vaccines for patients, doctors, and governments worldwide, with large businesses in vaccines, cancer, heart disease, and rare diseases. In 2020, its COVID-19 shot, developed with German partner BioNTech, became the first COVID-19 vaccine authorized in the United States. Its scientists find drug candidates and run clinical trials to prove they are safe and effective, and Pfizer then manufactures approved products in its own plants, earning most of its money from patented drugs before cheaper generic copies arrive. Pfizer was founded in 1849 as a chemicals business in Brooklyn and is based in New York City.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

New York City, New York

Founded

1849

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Newer drugs carry the business: launched and acquired products grew 18% operationally in Pfizer's August 2026 quarterly report.
  • The outlook improved: in August 2026, Pfizer raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $60.5 billion to $62.5 billion.
  • Vaccine scientists get room to grow: Pfizer's $470 million Pearl River, New York research expansion is designed for 370 workers.

What critics are saying

  • Expect more site cuts: in November 2025, Pfizer moved to shrink Swiss staff from about 300 to roughly 70.
  • Generics will erase sales: Pfizer expects patent losses to cut $17 billion to $18 billion of yearly revenue through 2028.
  • Pfizer is chasing obesity leaders: Metsera's monthly shot showed 12.3% weight loss at 28 weeks in February 2026 data.

What makes Pfizer unique

  • Pfizer bought its way into cancer: its Seagen buyout added antibody-drug conjugates, which carry chemotherapy straight to tumors.
  • Pfizer is betting on monthly obesity shots: Metsera's berobenatide is dosed once a month, unlike weekly Wegovy and Zepbound.
  • Pfizer leans on one partnered heart drug: blood thinner Eliquis, sold with Bristol Myers Squibb, brings about 14% of revenue.

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Benefits

  • Health Insurance
  • Dental Insurance
  • Vision Insurance
  • 401(k) Retirement Plan
  • 401(k) Company Match
  • Paid Vacation
  • Paid Sick Leave
  • Paid Holidays
  • Hybrid Work Options
  • Relocation Assistance

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-4%

1 year growth

-3%

2 year growth

-3%
Yahoo Finance
Oct 21st, 2026
Pfizer announces layoffs at Rocky Mount and Sanford sites, but gives no numbers

Pfizer has announced layoffs at its Rocky Mount and Sanford facilities in North Carolina, as part of a push to improve efficiency. It told employees of the cuts on Tuesday but did not say how many jobs will go, when, or in which departments. Rocky Mount makes sterile injectables, while Sanford focuses on vaccines and advanced biologics, including gene therapies. "Headcount reductions are a part of this initiative," Pfizer said, adding that it will give affected staff support services. "If indeed this happens, it's going to affect those families," said David Farris, president and chief executive officer of the Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce. The impact on local economies, he said, depends on the number laid off. As of Wednesday afternoon, no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice had been filed with the state.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 19th, 2026
Five low-beta dividend stocks: Pfizer yields 5.83%, Coca-Cola raises payout since 1999

Five defensive dividend stocks offer income with less volatility than the broader market, according to a 24/7 Wall St. analysis. All five have a beta well below 1, meaning they have historically moved less than the market. Pfizer leads with a forward yield of 5.83% at $29.49 a share. AT&T yields 4.77% at $23.27, and its $1.11 dividend uses about 42% of 2026 free cash flow guidance of $18B+. Debt of $144B is its main risk. Dominion Energy yields 4.24%, while Coca-Cola and Colgate-Palmolive each yield 2.27%. Coca-Cola has raised its dividend every year since 1999, and Colgate's next ex-dividend date is October 20, 2026.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 15th, 2026
GSK beats Pfizer as dividend stock: 39% payout vs 89% of free cash flow

GSK looks the better dividend stock than Pfizer, according to a comparison of the two drugmakers, which both face major patent losses before 2030. Pfizer yields 6.3% and GSK 4.1%. Over the twelve months to June 2026, Pfizer paid out 89% of its free cash flow in dividends ($9.79 billion of $10.98 billion), against 39% at GSK (£2.67 billion of £6.90 billion). Pfizer's chief executive officer, Albert Bourla, said the dividend will be maintained even in "the most stretched scenarios." Pfizer raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $60.5 billion to $62.5 billion. GSK raised its dividend 17.6% in fiscal 2025 after an earlier cut, and Q2 2026 sales rose 5%. Its main risk is debt: net debt rose to £22 billion after the Nuvalent acquisition.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 14th, 2026
Pfizer's 6% dividend pays investors to wait as oncology pipeline drives growth beyond COVID-19

Pfizer offers a dividend yield of just over 6% while it builds growth beyond its COVID-19 products. The drugmaker declared a quarterly dividend of $0.43 in June 2026, its 351st consecutive quarterly payment. In the second quarter, revenue from launched and acquired products rose 18% year over year. Pfizer raised the midpoint of its full-year guidance, helped by stronger non-COVID sales from drugs such as Eliquis, Padcev, and Vyndaqel. Oncology is the next focus. Pfizer is investing in antibody-drug conjugates and bispecific antibodies, and it entered a global collaboration with Innovent Biologics covering 12 early-stage cancer programs. Not every experimental drug will succeed, but a broader pipeline improves the odds. If new medicines work, the share price could rise on top of the dividend income.

Yahoo Finance
Oct 13th, 2026
Six high-yield dividend stocks fail the payout test, from Ford to Whirlpool's 9.37% mirage

High dividend yields can hide weak payouts, and a four-step test helps separate real income from traps. It checks earnings with one-offs stripped out, full-year free cash flow against dividends, management's explanation, and whether debt funds the gap. Ford yields 4.99% and shows a trailing EPS of -$1.88, caused by $4.2B in one-time charges. Its debt-to-equity of 4.66 leaves the $0.60 dividend exposed to a downturn. Pfizer yields 6.03%, but its free cash flow yield is 5.60%. Clorox's roughly $405M of free cash flow fell short of about $601M in dividends. Whirlpool fails every step. It cut its quarterly dividend from $1.75 to $0.90 in 2025, paid no common dividend in the second quarter of 2026, and its shares are down 59.48% since the end of 2025. 3M and Dow pass, with payouts now covered by cash.