Associate Director, Pipeline Project Management

Role Summary

The Associate Director, Pipeline Project Management partners with PPM to deliver on pipeline objectives in a complex life sciences environment. The role involves applying established project management approaches, solving problems with limited information, and guiding cross-functional teams to determine the best course of action while maintaining quality and safety. The Associate Director demonstrates a willingness to learn and a track record of managing R&D pipeline projects, potentially overseeing multiple projects with guidance from senior management.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate and/or contribute to asset strategy and evidence strategy, and lead development of the integrated project plan to ensure feasibility and alignment with target therapy area strategy, prioritization, and pipeline performance objectives.
• Own the single integrated plan that builds team commitment to shared goals with schedules and budgets based on clear dependencies and assumptions.
• Lead options planning, generate recommendations, alternatives, and tradeoffs to strengthen decision-making and optimize the project strategy.
• Lead team preparation for governance decisions and own schedule, risk, and budget inputs. Identify opportunities to accelerate by challenging constraints that impact the critical path and near-critical path activities.
• Orchestrate seamless handoffs with focus on the critical path through proactive project plan monitoring, risk management, and cross-functional management of project issues with timely escalation to leadership as required.
• Ensure rigor, consistency, and compliance in established systems to drive timely, high-quality data and reporting in and across projects. Build trusting relationships with the team and stakeholders to encourage transparency and collaboration.
• Use strong facilitation skills to lead regular project team meetings and apply consistent best practice for meeting agendas, actions, minutes, and other meeting documentation. Establish and sustain agreed-upon ways of working for effective team communication, decisions, and conflict resolution.
• Actively promote the organization's Code and values.
• Seek diverse perspectives, cultivate psychological safety, and ensure that all relevant voices are heard to strengthen outcomes and foster broad commitment. Work on any assignment as directed.

Qualifications

• Required: Bachelor’s degree and 7 years of project management experience in a matrix team environment in pharmaceutical R&D or related industry.
• Required: Experience in all aspects of project management based on established PM principles and methods (e.g., PMI/PMBOK), including scenario analysis, risk management, planning and execution, critical path management, lessons learned, communication and reporting.
• Required: Experience building and maintaining project plans, budget and resource forecasts, and project management documentation (key assumptions, risks, etc.).
• Required: Experience using established PM planning tools (e.g., Planisware, MS Project).
• Required: Experience facilitating project team meetings.
• Required: Experience preparing for governance interactions to enable funding, resourcing, and strategic and operational project decisions.
• Required: Experience leading and facilitating the identification, visualization, and acceleration of the project’s critical path, and the ability to present the critical path activities and dependencies to project stakeholders.
• Preferred: Demonstrated ability to communicate clear, concise view of project status, critical path, and upcoming work to help the team and functions work in concert.
• Preferred: Experience facilitating the identification, visualization, and acceleration of the project’s critical path, including the ability to explain the critical path activities and dependencies to project stakeholders.
• Preferred: Demonstrated expertise in managing project risks, ensuring that the risks across functions are appropriately identified, measured, managed, and communicated.
• Preferred: Demonstrated proficiency in established PM planning tools.
• Preferred: Demonstrated experience facilitating and documenting effective project team meetings.
• Preferred: Experience leading or contributing to organizational project management capabilities and PM-related improvement initiatives as needed.
• Preferred: Understanding of drug development and organizational knowledge to validate the operational feasibility, challenge project team assumptions, and prompt subject matter experts to consider the impact of portfolio strategy and external landscape (regulatory, commercial, and competitive).
• Preferred: Experience guiding team to develop recommendations and options inclusive of benefit, cost, and risk trade-offs to realize the project strategy.
• Preferred: Leadership and interpersonal skills, including ability to build trust and strengthen collaborative relationships across matrixed teams, and to identify, capture, share, and apply learnings and best practices across projects.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree