Director, Life Sciences Strategy & Development

Abridge Abridge · Vertical AI · San Francisco, CA · Operations

This role is for a Director of Life Sciences Strategy & Development at Abridge, a company with an AI-powered platform for medical conversations. The role is zero-to-one, focusing on identifying use cases, shaping product value, and structuring deals within the life sciences sector. It requires significant experience in life sciences business development, partnerships, and deal negotiation, with a strong understanding of pharma workflows and buying processes. The individual will lead discovery with pharma partners, manage the pipeline, and own deals from inception to contract, navigating data, compliance, and trust constraints. The role emphasizes collaboration, clear communication, and comfort with ambiguity.

What you'd actually do

  1. Shape the life sciences strategy. Identify the highest-value use cases, prioritize them, and shape what Abridge brings to market first.
  2. Gather market intelligence from life sciences prospects, existing health system customers, and industry trends to inform product priorities.
  3. Lead discovery with pharma partners. Sit with executives across commercial, medical affairs, R&D, and market access. Understand their workflows, data needs, buying processes, and willingness to pay.
  4. Build and manage the partner pipeline, cultivating relationships and target accounts across pharma. Leverage Abridge’s scale and network to open doors.
  5. Own deals from first conversation to signed contract. Negotiate NDAs, MSAs, SOWs, and data use agreements. Structure pilots with clear scope and success criteria.

Skills

Required

  • 7+ years in life sciences BD, partnerships, or strategy
  • Meaningful time spent at a pharma, biotech, or health tech / data company
  • Experience in rooms with pharma executives
  • 0-to-1 experience
  • Deal track record
  • Negotiated NDAs, MSAs, and SOWs
  • Pharma fluency
  • Mapping a pharma buying process across commercial, medical affairs, R&D, market access
  • Comfort with ambiguity
  • Strong collaborator
  • Clear, direct communication

Nice to have

  • Experience with real-world data, clinical data platforms, or health data partnerships
  • Relationships with pharma digital health, medical affairs, or commercial innovation leaders
  • Familiarity with ambient AI, clinical documentation, or point-of-care data
  • Prior work building new business lines at growth-stage healthcare technology companies

What the JD emphasized

  • zero-to-one role
  • first strategy and development lead
  • life sciences business development and partnerships before
  • structured complex deals
  • shaped what their company built based on what the market actually wanted
  • 0-to-1 experience
  • shaped something that wasn’t fully defined yet
  • Deal track record
  • negotiated NDAs, MSAs, SOWs yourself