Associate Director Commercial Strategy and Planning

Description

The Associate Director, Commercial Strategy and Planning is a client-facing consulting and delivery leader responsible for shaping and executing pre-launch engagements for emerging and commercial-stage biopharma clients making high-stakes decisions and preparing new assets for successful launch. The role guides C-suite and senior client leaders through commercial opportunity assessment, indication prioritization, forecasting, go-to-market strategy, commercialization model design, launch strategy, and organizational readiness.

This individual leads assigned engagements day to day, translates complex evidence into commercial strategy, directs integrated teams, and ensures that recommendations advance the client's asset, portfolio, and organizational objectives.

Working with the service offering lead, the Associate Director mobilizes the right combination of commercial, market access, medical, analytics, and research expertise for each client question. The role is accountable for integrating these perspectives into one evidence-based answer, aligning the team around clear decisions, and delivering a consistent client experience.

The role combines commercial strategy consulting, engagement leadership, and delivery excellence. It requires hypothesis-driven problem solving, rigorous analysis, persuasive storytelling, confident interaction with client leaders, and disciplined execution across complex, concurrent engagements.

Key Responsibilities

Client Engagement Leadership

• Serve as the day-to-day engagement lead for Commercial workstreams.
  
• Lead client communications, working sessions, workshops, and status meetings, partnering with the service offering lead on executive-level interactions and critical decisions.
  
• Translate client objectives into clear workplans, deliverables, timelines, and success measures.
  
• Build trusted-advisor relationships with client stakeholders and confidently present insights, recommendations, and commercial strategies to senior client leaders.
  
• Ensure client expectations, risks, and dependencies are proactively managed.
  

Project and Delivery Management

• Own deliverable scope, workplan, timeline, budget and profitability, resource requirements, quality, and overall engagement performance. Support service offering lead with overall program financials.
  
• Coordinate multidisciplinary teams across Commercial, Market Access, Medical, Analytics, AI, and specialist resources.
  
• Manage project governance, status reporting, issue resolution, and escalation processes.
  
• Drive execution across multiple concurrent workstreams and/or engagements while maintaining quality standards.
  
• Coordinate with external vendors, as needed, in project execution.
  
• Ensure deliverables are completed on time, within agreed internal parameters, and aligned to client needs.
  

Strategic Problem Solving

• Lead commercial strategy workstreams for asset launch such as the market landscape, segmentation, market research, forecasting, launch strategy and planning from problem definition through final recommendations and deliverables.
  
• Design and interpret primary and secondary research, integrate quantitative and qualitative evidence, and translate findings into a compelling commercial narrative with actionable recommendations for client decision-making.
  
• Provide critical review and challenge of project outputs to ensure strategic rigor and client value.
  
• Support development and evolution of service offering methodologies and best practices.
  

Cross-Functional Team Leadership

• Coordinate internal delivery resources, subject matter experts, and specialist contributors.
  
• Lead engagement planning, resource alignment, and workstream integration.
  
• Liaise with Medical counterparts to ensure appropriate cross-functional alignment.
  
• Facilitate internal collaboration across a global delivery team, including onshore and offshore project resources, internal and external SMEs, and technology teams.
  
• Coach junior team members; set clear expectations; review and strengthen their work; provide timely feedback; and build consulting and delivery capability across the team.
  

Innovation and Continuous Improvement

• Support implementation of AI-enabled delivery approaches and new methodologies.
  
• Contribute to development of delivery playbooks, templates, tools, and quality standards.
  
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency, scalability, and consistency across engagements.
  
• Capture and apply lessons learned to strengthen future project delivery.
  

Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's degree required.
  
• Advanced degree such as an MBA, MPH, PharmD, PhD, MS, or equivalent preferred.
  

Experience

• 7-10+ years of relevant experience, including at least 5 years in life sciences consulting, with substantial responsibility for commercial strategy and client engagement leadership in the pharmaceutical or biotech sector.
  
• Experience functioning as a Senior Consultant, Engagement Manager, Project Leader, Associate Director, or comparable consulting role.
  
• Demonstrated success leading client engagements from project initiation through final delivery.
  
• Demonstrated expertise in creating and evaluating commercial strategies for pharmaceutical brands and assets, including product planning, market assessment, forecasting, launch strategy, competitive intelligence, and related commercial decisions.
  
• Experience managing and working within cross-functional teams in matrixed environments, including off-shore delivery teams (e.g., India, Argentina, Serbia).
  
• Experience supporting emerging biotech or pre-commercial organizations (preferred)
  
• AI-enabled delivery, analytics, or digital transformation experience (preferred).
  
• Exposure to global and multi-market commercialization planning (preferred).
  

Critical Competencies

• Consulting and Strategy Structured problem solving; hypothesis-driven thinking; executive communication; strategic storytelling; insight generation
  
• Delivery Leadership Project management; stakeholder management; resource coordination; risk management; quality oversight
  
• Leadership Team leadership and coaching; influence without authority; cross-functional collaboration; change management; executive presence
  
• Technical Knowledge Commercialization strategy; market assessment; forecasting and business analysis; market access fundamentals; pharmaceutical industry knowledge
  

Success Profile

Successful candidates will demonstrate the ability to:

• Independently lead complex engagements.
  
• Understanding and hands-on delivery experience of commercial strategy engagements
  
• Balance strategic depth, commercial pragmatism, and disciplined delivery.
  
• Influence C-suite, senior client, and cross-functional stakeholders
  
• Align multidisciplinary teams around one answer, one workplan, and one standard of quality.
  
• Deliver high-quality client outcomes in a fast-paced, emerging business environment.
  
• Use AI, analytics, and reusable delivery assets to improve insight, speed, and scalability without compromising judgement or quality.

The annual base salary for this position ranges from $146,300 to $178,600. The base salary range represents the anticipated low and high of the Syneos Health range for this position. Actual salary will vary based on various factors such as the candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies, and proficiency for the role. In addition, some positions may include eligibility to earn commissions/bonus based on company and / or individual performance.

At Syneos Health, we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace. If your past experience doesn't align perfectly, we encourage you to apply anyway. At times, we will consider transferable skills from previous roles. We also encourage you to join our Talent Network to stay connected to additional career opportunities.

Why Syneos Health? We partner with industry experts to solve and execute against today's toughest commercialization challenges facing the world's leading healthcare companies. The diversification and breadth of our new and existing partnerships create a multitude of career paths and employment opportunities on our Commercial Operations and Leadership teams. Join our game-changing, global company dedicated to creating better, smarter, faster ways to get biopharmaceutical therapies to patients. Experience the thrill of knowing that your everyday efforts are contributing to improving patients' lives around the world.

Work Here Matters Everywhere | How are you inspired to change lives?

Syneos Health companies are affirmative action/equal opportunity employers (Minorities/Females/Veterans/Disabled)

At Syneos Health, we believe in providing an environment and culture in which Our People can thrive, develop and advance. We reward and recognize our people by providing valuable benefits and a quality-of-life balance. The benefits for this position will include a competitive compensation package, Health benefits to include Medical, Dental and Vision, Company match 401k, flexible paid time off (PTO) and sick time. Because certain states and municipalities have regulated paid sick time requirements, eligibility for paid sick time may vary depending on where you work. Syneos Health complies with all applicable federal, state, and municipal paid sick time requirements.

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.