Job Description
Role Summary
We are seeking an experienced, strategic leader to own the end‑to‑end portfolio of commercial data products and services for the US Market aligned Human Health (HH) organization. This role drives product strategy, delivery, quality and adoption for data assets that support marketing, sales, market access, digital, Customer engagement, patient services, Health equity and other HH teams. The role will be responsible to partner with US Market aligned teams from DHH (US Market Engagement, Global Market Engagement, Data Strategy, Data Governance, Commercial AI Capabilities, Digital Data Product Teams, Forecasting, Market Research, Customer Experience, Commercial Architecture et al.), Central Data & Analytics office, HH leadership, IT and Finance to understand data product & context engineering needs for structured and unstructured data, lead delivery of services and solutions, create a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, enable operational excellence. The leader in this role should have prior experience demonstrating disciplined demand management and value creation/realization, optimize resourcing & spend to stay within budget, negotiate timelines and manage delivery of services/solutions. The Senior Director will lead cross‑functional teams to build scalable, compliant, and business‑ready data products that accelerate commercial decision‑making and measurable outcomes across HH. The leader will also be responsible for understanding key trends (eg. DAI, Gen AI,...) across healthcare and other industry verticals and be responsible to make our data eco-system AI and gen AI ready with the right semantics and context.
The person in this role will also collaborate with International Commercial Data Product and Services lead to set up the framework to share best practices on building, management and scaling of Data products & services, demand management and delivery excellence.
Position Responsibilities
- Define and execute a commercial data product portfolio strategy that prioritizes high‑value use cases, drives ROI on third‑party spend and unlocks first‑party data value.
- Develop and manage data product solutions (Analytical ready data sets and Solution ready data sets) to enable HH capabilities & solutions.
- Ensure the data across our eco-system is AI ready with the right meta data, semantics and context.
- Enables out of the box systematized insights to support our inline and launch portfolio.
- Knowledge and experience leveraging AI and agentic AI to drive task automation, process automation and, if necessary, complete reimagination of the ideation to development to deployment and enablement process of the data product life cycle.
- This leader will partner closely Central Data & Analytics office (CDAO) teams on enterprise data ingestion patterns and data quality standards.
- Leads development and management data pipelines on commercial data platforms (e.g., Databricks) and shared services.
- Ensures reliability and scalability of ingestion, transformation, and data workflows across data layers.
- Coordinates with CTO and Digital Human Health teams to maintain technical infrastructure and enable product roadmap.
- Own product lifecycle for a suite of commercial data products: product vision, roadmaps, requirements, delivery milestones, release management and adoption metrics.
- Lead and grow a multidisciplinary organization (product managers, data product engineers, and solution architects) focused on delivering production‑grade data services.
- Translate commercial stakeholders’ objectives into clear product requirements and prioritized backlogs; ensure solutions are fit‑for‑purpose, reusable and production ready.
- Embed data governance, data quality, privacy and compliance requirements (HIPAA, CCPA/CPRA where applicable) into product design — “compliance by design.”
- Promote standardization and reusability through product templates, documentation, data catalogs, and developer/consumer onboarding playbooks.
- Partner with US Market aligned teams from DHH, HH, IT and Finance to understand the broader Commercial data products, solution and services needs, enable demand management based on available resourcing, and budgets, negotiate timelines and manage delivery of services/solutions.
- Understand key trends (eg. AI, Gen AI,...) across healthcare and other industry verticals and be able to translate that for our company's in terms of innovative approaches to maximize the value of our investments in data and data products
Behavioral Competencies Required
• Strategic understanding of our business portfolio and ability to anticipate data gaps/opportunities for our product portfolio
• Strategic planning and prioritization of demand and innovation aligned to TA needs, LROP requirements, and platform evolution
• Able to drive risk mitigation strategies and represent a Digital/Analytics org in Legal, Privacy, and Global Ethics forums
• Able to attract, develop and grow talent and lead large and high performing cross functional teams in matrixed organizations
• Collaborate with cross functional teams across DHH, CTO, Enterprise teams and other our company's teams (HH and beyond)
• Ability to operate independently and be accountable to leadership for delivery excellence, timelines, quality and good financial stewardship.
Functional Competencies Required
- Ability and experience leading teams with an AI native mindset and ability to challenge the status quo and enable a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
- Experience in working with enterprise/central data functions, a wide array of structured and unstructured data used across pharma and biotech companies, to support key programs and initiatives (e.g., Marketing, Sales, Mkt access, Content, Account management, Activity...)
- Understanding of how data layers support downstream use cases in brand, forecasting, and patient support
- Hands-on experience with developing data platforms, including FAIR, consented, & payer data integration
- Deep expertise in commercial pharma data domains with extensive experience in applied data and insights using real world data assets
• Experience with data strategy, product engineering, and digital innovation programs
• Proven success in building and scaling modern data platforms and pipelines (e.g., AWS, Databricks)
• Familiarity with agile product development, API orchestration, and data privacy requirements (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR)
Experience Requirements
13+ years in data engineering, data products, commercial analytics or consulting in pharma or life sciences
Educational Requirements
Bachelor’s or Master’s or PHD. in Engineering, Data Science, or Computer Science, Computational Science, Actuarial sciences
MBA or innovation/entrepreneurial certification preferred
**Required Skills: **
Account Management, Business Intelligence (BI), Commercial Analytics, Computational Sciences, Database Administration, Data Engineering, Data Management, Data Modeling, Data Strategies, Data Visualization, Delivery Excellence, Design Applications, Information Management, Marketing, Operational Excellence, Process Automations, Product Strategies, Product Vision, Risk Mitigation Strategies, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Strategic Planning, System Designs
**Preferred Skills: **
Current Employees apply HERE
Current Contingent Workers apply HERE
US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:
Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.
As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:
EEOC Know Your Rights
EEOC GINA Supplement
We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.
Learn more about your rights, including under California, Colorado and other US State Acts
The salary range for this role is
$190,800.00 - $300,300.00
This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.
The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.
We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.
You can apply for this role through https://jobs.merck.com/us/en (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.
San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance
**Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully ** Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.
**Employee Status: **
Regular
Relocation:
No relocation
VISA Sponsorship:
No
Travel Requirements:
10%
Flexible Work Arrangements:
Hybrid
Shift:
Not Indicated
Valid Driving License:
No
Hazardous Material(s):
n/a
Job Posting End Date:
05/27/2026
***A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date. **