Job roles
Our job roles sit across a wide range of departments. These are just some of those who look for talented, motivated individuals to join their team.
Sales and Marketing
The Sales and Marketing teams are integral to the operation of our company, as it is through them that we gain a deep understanding of customer needs and are able to design competitive strategies and customer offers.
Approximately 3500 people work in sales and marketing, at multiple sites around the world. This 'global reach' allows us to tailor our local and global marketing strategies to meet the needs of the market. This international distribution benefits our employees, as it provides the opportunity to work across different regions and expand their knowledge.
Our employees are involved in a wide range of projects, including shaping product strategies, conducting market research, launching new products and ongoing customer relationship management. What makes life within the department even more varied is the range of stakeholders we interact with.
Most sales and marketing employees within Syngenta have an undergraduate degree and many have either an MBA or other masters degree. Increasingly, our employees come from fields outside of agriculture, enriching Syngenta with great diversity.
Information Systems
The IS department plays a vital role in Syngenta’s success, making the best use of the very latest information and technological advances to keep the company at the leading edge of the information age. For instance, a recently developed integrated data entry platform and data warehouse is helping researchers gain new insights faster and more effectively.
Over 500 people work in our department in all, spread across IS functions in more than 80 countries. As part of a large international organization, we work with end-users from every corner of the globe and every part of the business.
The range of projects we work on is equally diverse. We have just rolled out an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for around 2,000 global users, a new end-user client based on Microsoft VISTA, and a massive infrastructure consolidation program to provide services out of new generation data centers.
Our people are the key to our success and we place a huge emphasis on encouraging their development. Whether they’re working as a project manager, service manager or business relationship manager our people are highly motivated and highly qualified. Most of them have an academic background, spanning physicists, economists and computer scientists.
Research and Development
Innovation is fundamental to Syngenta's success, and the Research and Development lies at the heart of this. The work of our department allows the company to meet the constantly changing needs of agricultural markets, and in doing so succeed commercially. Our pipeline is strong and we are continually working on improved ways of raising the quality and yield of crops worldwide.
Our department has 4,000 employees across four major research sites, field testing stations in all the major climatic zones of the world and two molecular marker laboratories. Our research activities are organized to avoid duplication by concentrating skills in specific disciplines at a single site, although many groups work in project teams across multiple sites to maximize the global resources and experience within the department.
We pride ourselves as having some of the best minds in the market working for us, and to maintain this we hire very selectively. Our employees come from a variety of backgrounds, with the majority our biologists and chemists having specialist university degrees. What is common to all our employees is the desire to make a tangible contribution.
Supply Chain
Supply Chain is central to the success of Syngenta. By sourcing, manufacturing and distributing products as efficiently as possible we are responsible for ensuring we, as a company, meet our commitments to customers. We are able to drive the success of Syngenta's innovative and varied products by understanding and anticipating the market, maintaining our position as an industry leader.
We are based across all regions, allowing us to draw on local expertise, innovation and resources. The breadth of roles is wide, with planning, negotiation and change management just some of the activities our employees undertake on a day-to-day basis. There are a variety of projects which provide employees in the department with opportunities to develop their skills.
Our employees come from different backgrounds, with some having a master's degree in Supply Chain in addition to a commercial or engineering undergraduate degree. We value diversity and so actively look for people with different educational and professional experience. What all our successful employees have in common is adaptability and commitment.
Regulatory
The fundamental purpose of the Regulatory department is maintaining Syngenta's license to sell. This ensures that we can develop and sell high quality products, maximizing our innovative potential and protecting our leading position in the industry.
Our employees are involved throughout the lifecycle of a product, through research, development and launch, and on an ongoing basis, they interact with the Supply Chain department in incorporating new sources and processes. We are also involved in protecting the company and products through relationship management with regulatory authorities and playing a key role in issue management activities. Requirements vary extensively for different products and regions, which makes our work stimulating and interesting.
There are around 250 employees within the Regulatory department, with people located across all regions. By having a wide geographical spread we can get a deep understanding of local regulations and manage issues in a timely manner.
Specialists will normally have a degree, undergraduate or above, ideally in a relevant subject such as life sciences, chemistry or agronomy. To succeed within our work, presentation, strategic and negotiation skills are vital.
Legal & Taxes
The Legal & Taxes department is fundamental to Syngenta, taking care of the lawfulness of Syngenta's actions and securing our business against damage. The innovative nature of the company means that we are consistently breaking new ground. Our department is responsible for making this progress legally possible and for protecting the company's business assets. Since Syngenta is a multinational, our work is equally crucial for the company's success in addressing local as well as the global challenges.
There are several different specialist groups within the Legal & Taxes department, creating a diverse, international team. The projects our employees work on vary based on their area of expertise, with intellectual property, corporate, licensing and tax being just some of the wide range of specialties.
Working in agribusiness means that our activities are stimulating and varied; the external parties involved in our work range from a coffee grower in Brazil to a multinational NGO. This variety means that the ability to interact with both external and internal stakeholders is vital for our success.
Our employees share an enthusiasm to contribute to the business which underpins our activity. We require our people to have a deep understanding of the connection between legal and economic issues, along with fluent English and the necessary legal qualifications in their area of expertise. As a company, and as a department, we are committed to encouraging personal and professional growth, both formally and through the input of inspiring, supportive colleagues.
Finance
The Finance department is at the centre of Syngenta's operations and core to the company's financial success. It is our role to ensure that all decisions are made with a view to adding value to the company and support our ongoing growth.
Our department is present wherever Syngenta have a site, with 1100 employees in over 90 countries. The roles across the department are diverse, varying from core Finance functions such as accounting and decision support through to specialist roles, such as Treasury. The diversity of our operations helps our employees meet their full potential as soon as possible, and we actively encourage job moves across roles and geographies.
As a people based function, our success depends on the ability of our employees to understand and work with other departments, from R&D to Global Supply, Strategy and Sales and Marketing. As our department is involved in all the company's key projects, our employees are able to make a tangible contribution to the success of the business.
Our employees are enthusiastic and like to be challenged, and it is this which drives the dynamic environment within our department. We pride ourselves on the fact that the people within our department come from a variety of educational backgrounds and join at various stages throughout their careers. It is this diversity, for example the value of having graduates from our Finance Management Program working alongside qualified professionals, which helps us grow and succeed. We expect relevant professional qualifications from people joining our team or a commitment to acquire them.
Corporate Affairs
The Corporate Affairs function is responsible for building and maintaining the reputation of Syngenta around the world and thus plays a pivotal role in the company's ongoing success. In so doing, we communicate with a broad range of stakeholders about the social, ethical, environmental and economic contributions that our products and people make to society. This makes our work fascinating and fulfilling.
The Corporate Affairs function comprises Communications, Public and Government Affairs and Investor Relations. With over 100 people around the world, the function has grown rapidly in the past 18 months in order to meet the expectations of increasingly demanding stakeholders in a highly dynamic environment.
There is a wide array of challenging roles within the function ranging from media relations positions dealing with all aspects of print, broadcast and online media; roles managing the brand and visual identity of the company; internal communications and employee engagement activities; positions managing key external relationships with governments, associations and international NGOs; and, roles interacting with our owners, the shareholders.
The majority of our work is both complex and has an international flavor and therefore our employees have ample opportunity to broaden their knowledge and skills by working across a number of geographies and with colleagues from a variety of functions within the company.
Given the diversity of our activities, we recruit people from a wide range of cultural and academic backgrounds. We have some 20 nationalities represented in the function with qualifications as varied as biology, mathematics, law, economics, history, communications and languages. We are all passionate about Syngenta and the contribution we make. We aim to communicate that passion to all the stakeholders with whom we interact with skill, clarity and integrity.