Director, Npd Process Improvement

Johnson & Johnson Johnson & Johnson · Pharma · West Chester, PA +5

The Director, NPD Process Improvement plays a critical strategic and operational role in creating, governing, and executing a best-in-class end-to-end process improvement strategy across Orthopaedics R&D, including GxP product development processes, R&D Business processes, and PMO operational processes for the development of implants, instruments, capital equipment, software, and biologics. This leader will be responsible for portfolio management of a comprehensive set of process improvement initiatives across R&D, optimizing and recommending the right combination and phasing of data-driven improvement projects to accelerate R&D operational performance in alignment with the company’s multi-faceted goals and in compliance with relevant regulatory standards, including FDA, ISO 13485, and 21 CFR 820. The Director will partner with critical functions such as R&D Leadership, PMO, Quality, Supply Chain, Marketing, Regulatory, Finance, and other supporting functions to ensure the process improvement portfolio roadmap is aligned and optimized to achieve long-range R&D value creation. The Director will be responsible for the results of the strategic R&D process improvement program and will drive execution per plan, demonstrating ROI for invested resources across the business. This is a high visibility role requiring significant leadership, communication, and change management, with critical input to our overall business strategy and effectiveness.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own and direct a strategic portfolio of cross-functional process improvement projects across end-to-end R&D, ensuring they align with R&D organizational priorities and deliver measurable business value while maintaining required compliance to all regulations. Create clear project selection criteria & ROI frameworks to ensure projects are tied to value realization (e.g. time-to-market, design cycle iteration time, software delivery efficiency, verification/validation first-pass success, cost avoidance, project governance, launch excellence, risk management, or other business objectives).
  2. Identify and prioritize high-value process improvements spanning new product development and business processes - considering Front End, Core Development, and Post-launch activities, as well as project governance, reporting, resource management, risk management, and valuation rigor. Gather quantitative & qualitative organizational insights to develop recommendations for how to effectively streamline.
  3. Serve as main integrator of R&D with Cross-functions, including Quality, Regulatory, Marketing, Finance, and Supply Chain, to ensure that process improvements are effectively aligned, implemented, and sustained.
  4. Identify, prioritize, and allocate resources needed to execute improvement initiatives in collaboration with senior l

Skills

Required

  • Process improvement methodologies (e.g., Lean, Six Sigma)
  • Portfolio management
  • Cross-functional leadership
  • Change management
  • Regulatory compliance (FDA, ISO 13485, 21 CFR 820)
  • Data-driven decision making
  • Strategic planning
  • R&D operations

Nice to have

  • Experience in Orthopaedics or MedTech
  • Software development lifecycle management
  • Robotics and digital surgery

What the JD emphasized

  • GxP product development processes
  • regulatory standards
  • FDA
  • ISO 13485
  • 21 CFR 820
  • process improvement strategy
  • process improvement initiatives
  • process improvement portfolio roadmap
  • strategic R&D process improvement program