Pros
If you have a little bit of lead DM experience and are looking for the next step in your career growth, Quintiles may be a good next step for 2 years up to a maximum of 4 years. You will gain significant lead experience.
Cons
Q-DM is definitely Not a place to stay long term, but is a next step in a career growth path. Advancement opportunity are extremely rare unless you are moving from an "assistant" data team lead" position to an "associate" data team lead position, no matter how good you are as a DM professional. If management assigns you to a major client and the client is satisfied with you, you will be pigeon holed to the client as your career. You are STUCK and is almost impossible to switch. Do not expect to have relevant DM management oversight support. Some companies have DM oversight managers (Senior Managers) who provide support to lead data managers. Quintiles has associate directors who in general are aloof to the lead activities and the needs of the data team leads (lead data managers). If your projects are naturally running well, you will look good to your managers, but if there are client concerns or internal project management concerns, do not expect director/associate director support. Most director/associate director level DM folks are honest and above reproach, but there are some who are less than honest and interested in only their own welfare and unfortunately are in influential positions. I have seen a number of employees slandered and career growth stunted by dishonesty. Be careful! Because Quintiles' DM has thousands of DM personnel, there is an incredible bureaucracy. Management for each DM group, i.e., DM operations, testing, programming, etc., are territorial and very protective of their groups' employees. If you have problems with an incompetent data operations coordinator, expect their managers to try to pass the blame on you or justify incompetence. Because the data team lead does not have strong DM oversight management support, expect to spend excessive overtime hours. The TMF/DMSF work is unbelievably inefficient. You literally can average 15 hours a week uploading documents and making sure files are named correctly, etc. ... Again support for data team leads is minimal and the support that is provided is all but useless. For the above reasons I think of the Quintiles data team lead role as a short term career option. If you need a job and there are no other DM employment options, Quintiles DM may be a consideration. Otherwise, I recommend avoiding Quintiles data management. If you are able to find a lead DM role within another company (besides Quintiles and PPD), you will probably work less hours, receive a higher salary, and have increased DM oversight support. All the best to you in your decision making!
