About IRRI

Job Purpose

The Seed Health and Logistics Unit (SHU) provides integral logistics solutions and innovations in seed health that add value to IRRI projects, globally, contributing to CGIAR impact, to transform food, land and water systems in a climate crisis. It strives to facilitate biological materials exchange within IRRI and with IRRI partners globally under the most efficient processes while ensuring compliance with national and international regulations and conformance to most international standards.

The Logistics and Compliance subunit ensures compliance with appropriate Intellectual Property requirements, quarantine clearance and germplasm exchange procedures and reporting. It coordinates with concerned IRRI units on protocols to be followed, prepares and validates accuracy and completeness of necessary documentation to secure intellectual property rights including material transfer agreement and shipment delivery and ensures that all SHU related data are properly recorded and stored for access, retrieval and reporting.

Under the direction of the supervisor, this role shall perform data validation, generation of the required documents, communication with customers and other stakeholders, and ensure that complete documentation is made available and properly recorded in conformance to the quality management system maintaining traceability and legal and regulatory compliance. In collaboration with the IRRI Biosafety officer, this role shall also contribute to IRRI IBC and TDC documentation requirements of biosafety and regulatory compliance during the movement of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and plant breeding innovation materials (PBIs).

This position will be based at the IRRI Headquarters, Los Baños, Philippines and may only be filled by permanent citizens of the Philippines.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Facilitate procurement, review, and coordination with stakeholders of Seed and Non-seed Biological Materials germplasm exchanges’ export and import documents/ requirements against the Standard Operating Procedures/ Protocols following ISO 9001:2015 documented procedures
• Respond directly to clients’ concerns ensuring compliance, validity, accuracy, and completeness of information and documentation
• Process documents and update/maintain import and export records/ data in the available databases and shipment tools
• Review, verify and ensure accuracy and completeness of all Plant Quarantine Clearance applications such as research brief, outline of study and other accompanying documents prior to approval of the Bureau of Plant Industry-Plant Quarantine Service
• Manage seed health testing data and coordinate SHU’s seed health laboratory incoming and outgoing seed requests
• Process documents, records and maintain SHU database/repository of imports and exports seeds and NSBM
• Process SHU operations of regulated and deregulated materials classified as GMOs or Plant breeding innovations as well as other non-seed materials for research collaborations and partnerships in compliance with internal policies and national and international regulations conforming to statutory requirements
• Maintain records and databases for transactions involving GMOs and PBIs and other non-seed biomaterials, manage the service planner and maintain the customer relationship manager systems
• Coordinate submissions to TDC, BPI and DOST-BC secretariat for imports, exports and movements of regulated materials
• Ensure the design of procedures, work instructions, form and records are suitable to the requirements and needs and expectations of interested parties
• Contribute to enhancements and development of the SHU and collaborate in communication and awareness sessions with customers and stakeholders
• Coordinate with the Biosafety officer and SIT for the safe and compliant handling and movement of PBI, GMOs and regulated materials. Coordinate with internal and external collaborators to ensure all required documents and data are delivered
• Assist with the Plant Quarantine Officer during quarantine inspection and phytosanitary certification in regards to the documents and data presented in order to comply with the requirements of importing and exporting countries
• Respond to queries about the status of service requests to the customers
• Assist in the development of communication or information sharing tools that provide assistance to stakeholders that use the data/experiments results
• Prepare Phytosanitary Certificates of regulated materials in line with the phytosanitary certification process and following additional internal and external requirements in coordination with Assistant Data Management
• Generate reports in various forms, e.g. statistical graphical or table formats using the processed data from database/repository needed by the SHU Manager and other clients requesting data of germplasm exchange
• Prepare the necessary accompanying documents for export Non-seed Biological Materials ready for packing, booking, and shipment in coordination with Sr. Assistant-Admin Coordination
• Assist in the distribution of reports through email, web or other conventional media
• Assist in the generation of presentation slides and posters based on the above-mentioned reports
• Maintain and update the data repository structure to ensure that records are correct and complete

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in the areas of Biology, Biotechnology or Agriculture with at least 2 years relevant working experience

Skills Required

Mandatory

• Has working experience on Quality Management, Regulatory Compliance, Biosafety and/or Seed Stewardship
• Has experience in MS Office and Google applications for documents, spreadsheet and presentations
• Has excellent oral and written communication skills
• Has experience with data management applications and/or customer relationship managers

Preferred

• Is able to work independently
• Has good interpersonal skills
• Customer focused

IRRI offers a highly extensive employee benefits package inclusive of globally-covered medical insurance, retirement plan, life and accident insurance and other allowances.

Join our team and be part of our story!

Please note only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
This position will remain open until filled.