Associate Director, CRM Product Owner

Novartis•East Hanover, NJ

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The Associate Director, CRM Product Owner supports the strategy, development, and delivery of priority CRM capabilities across the US CRM ecosystem. This role partners with business and technology teams to translate customer and field needs into clear requirements, manage a prioritized backlog, and drive execution through agile delivery. The Associate Director helps improve how Novartis engages customers by enabling process improvements, technology enhancements, analytics, and user experience updates—while ensuring solutions meet governance, privacy, and compliance expectations.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in related field is required
Proven success in driving product management capabilities for large-scale CRM implementations.
5-7+ years of experience in product management, technology strategy, innovation, or leadership roles, preferably in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, or CRM sectors
Deep understanding of the CRM landscape (Sales, Marketing and Service), including Salesforce (Agentforce, Marketing Cloud, Health Cloud, Data360, Core platform), Veeva, and the major and evolving players in the ecosystem.
Understanding of CRM, AI, and Data platforms and architectures (e.g., Salesforce, Salesforce Data Cloud, Veeva, OpenAI, Snowflake, or similar data lake technologies).
Experience being accountable for the operations of product management including backlog health and prioritization, agile practices and ceremonies, and driving strategic innovation
Excellent communication skills with the ability to build stakeholder buy-in and alignment
Experience in AI-supported product management techniques including LLM supported user-story creation and process mapping
Must possess an ability to foster cross-functional alignment of key stakeholders to create a disciplined, ambitious, and collaborative, global, commercial CRM strategy
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex data and make informed decisions
Ability to adapt strategies and approaches in a rapidly evolving technological landscape

Nice To Haves

Master of Science and/or MBA preferred

Responsibilities

Own and deliver a defined product area: Drive end-to-end delivery for a set of CRM capabilities (e.g., field productivity, customer engagement workflows, medical engagement) from discovery through release and hypercare.
Translate business needs into requirements: Partner with stakeholders to gather, document, and prioritize requirements; define user stories, acceptance criteria, and success measures.
Manage and refine the backlog: Maintain a healthy backlog (prioritization, refinement cadence, dependencies, definition of ready/done) aligned to quarterly/PI planning and stakeholder priorities.
Drive disciplined agile execution: Work with delivery teams to plan, execute, and track work; remove blockers; manage scope trade-offs; and ensure predictable, high-quality releases.
Improve processes and user experience: Identify pain points in current workflows and propose enhancements; validate solutions with users; and support change adoption with clear documentation and enablement.
Partner across business and IT: Coordinate with CRM product managers, architecture, analytics, privacy/legal, and commercial/medical stakeholders to align on requirements, sequencing, and release readiness.
Ensure governance, privacy, and compliance: Follow established governance processes and support risk assessments to ensure solutions meet regulatory, privacy, security, and data standards.
Mentor and coordinate delivery resources: Provide day-to-day direction to extended team members (e.g., analysts, contractors) and contribute to capability building across the product owner community.
Support change enablement and adoption: Partner with training and communications leads to ensure releases are understood, adopted, and measured; incorporate feedback into iterative improvements.
Communicate status and outcomes: Provide concise updates on roadmap items, risks, decisions needed, and measurable outcomes to product management leadership and stakeholders.
Contribute to product strategy and continuous improvement: Bring market/industry insights, user feedback, and performance data to inform roadmap recommendations and operational improvements.
Maintain platform and domain awareness: Stay current on CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Veeva) and evolving best practices; apply learnings pragmatically within the Novartis ecosystem.