Associate Director - Customer Behaviour Analytics

Merck Merck · Pharma · Maharashtra, India

Associate Director of Customer Behavior Analytics at Merck, leading a team to build and deploy customer understanding models (segmentation, propensity, risk-stratification) using ML/AI and GenAI. The role focuses on generating insights from diverse healthcare data sources to inform US commercial strategy and customer engagement.

What you'd actually do

  1. Customer model-build: Lead the development of customer-understanding models that drive downstream activation and measurement — HCP segmentation (personal / non-personal), account / IDN segmentation, patient segmentation and profiling, propensity models (writer / non-writer), patient risk-stratification (initial model build with analog / business-rules and progressing to ML), and early adopter / follower analysis.
  2. Integrated Customer Profile (ICP) and KOL build: Own the analytics build for ICP and the KOL-identification capability (KOLeidoscope build). Define data inputs, model logic, refresh cadence and validation criteria.
  3. Patient Insights Engine (PIE) and consumer extensions: Lead the build and evolution of the customer-data spine across PIE phases - CDM, Business Rules, Data Augmentation (incl. EMR), and Predictive Models — and the consumer extension (PIECON) where applicable.
  4. Content Affinity: Drive micro-segmentation analytics to enable targeted content recommendations and quantify which content resonates with distinct segments, informing both brand strategy and Field & CRM execution.
  5. Team leadership and cross-functional orchestration: Lead and mentor Senior Managers (and the specialists / interns reporting into them), providing guidance on best practices in data analytics, modelling, validation and insight synthesis. Manage team workload proactively and ensure optimal resource utilisation. Lead cross-functional insights pods in addition to direct teams.

Skills

Required

  • 8+ years in pharma/biotech across commercial analytics, strategy with deep pharmaceutical commercialization experience, and delivery of complex analytical initiatives.
  • 4+ years leading high-performing teams; proven ability to coach talent, build inclusive culture, and lead cross-functional pods in a matrixed setup.
  • Strong consultative mindset with demonstrated ability to translate brand and commercial strategies into actionable analytics and insight plans.
  • Executive presence with ability to influence senior stakeholders
  • Leverage advanced statistical methods and ML/AI modeling with strong validation practices
  • regression and time-series models
  • segmentation/clustering approaches (k-means, hierarchical)

Nice to have

  • entrepreneurial spirit
  • consultative and strategic mindset
  • deep customer-analytics experience in pharma / biotech (segmentation, micro-segmentation, campaign analytics, productised customer-data offerings)
  • fluency in technology (AI, agentic, GenAI)
  • demonstrated record of producing actionable insights from analytics
  • strong understanding of the US data landscape - claims, EMR / EHR, Rx, activity, promotional data, content-engagement data
  • ability to translate ambiguous business questions into advanced, scalable analytical solutions
  • Advanced degree (MBA, MS, PharmD, PhD) is preferred

What the JD emphasized

  • deep pharmaceutical commercialization experience
  • proven ability to coach talent
  • demonstrated ability to translate brand and commercial strategies into actionable analytics and insight plans
  • AI, agentic, GenAI

Other signals

  • customer segmentation
  • propensity modelling
  • ML/AI modeling
  • GenAI experimentation