Director, Advanced Marketing Analytics & Optimization- RRD

MSD•Rahway, PA

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Advanced Marketing Analytics & Optimization is responsible for leading Marketing Effectiveness & Optimization across the US Rare Disease and Respiratory Commercial and DHH organizations, serving as a strategic analytics leader and trusted advisor to Business Unit and enterprise stakeholders. The Director drives the application of advanced analytics, predictive and prescriptive models, and GenAI-enabled solutions to optimize customer engagement, sales force effectiveness, promotion resource allocation, and marketing investments. The role bridges strategy, analytics, digital platforms, and execution, translating complex business priorities into scalable, data-driven solutions that improve commercial performance. Accountable for end-to-end workflow automation, capability development, and adoption of modern platforms, this leader ensures analytics are actionable, understandable, and embedded into day-to-day decision-making. The Director builds and leads high-performing teams, partners closely with E2E marketing and cross-functional leaders and continuously evolves analytics methodologies to deliver measurable business impact. The preferred candidate should have intellectual curiosity, entrepreneurial spirit, consultative mindset, strong understanding of healthcare & pharma marketing. The person should be able to identify the data, analytics and research needs to define, enable, and inform commercial strategies of our brand and business leaders. The selected candidate should have a good understanding of US data landscape, commercial analytics capabilities, and technology. This person should have demonstrated the ability to create structure, break down unstructured problem statements into solvable chunks, articulate what needs to be answered through new pieces of research and what needs to be addressed through secondary data driven analytics. The candidate should have strong Rare Disease and/or specialty, cardiovascular, respiratory expertise/therapeutic area knowledge. This role will require interfacing and collaborating with many teams. The candidate should demonstrate consistently strong leadership skills. The preferred candidate should have led cross functional teams in their prior roles, demonstrated the ability to develop talent and create a strong team culture that brings the best out of everyone in the team. The person will have a growth mindset and embody a culture of continuous learning. Effective communication skills are essential for a candidate to be successful in this role. Individuals in this role should have shown the ability to mentor, coach, and lead teams (direct line management and indirect management of individuals with a dotted reporting line). The individual will develop the next generation of leaders within DHH (Digital Human Health). It is critical for the candidate to create a team culture where team members are focused on ‘things that matter’, empowered to act with urgency, actively innovate and are supported through continuous learning and feedback process. The chosen candidate should be a leader that strongly believes and embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Individuals with prior experience leading high performing teams is highly desired.

Requirements

Undergraduate degree in related discipline is required.
Minimum of 12+ years of marketing insights and strategy support and expertise in delivering complex analytical projects in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry using brand analytics, market research and/or large patient or physician databases for US
Minimum 3+ years in leading commercial insights teams
Deep expertise in marketing effectiveness, promotion optimization, and advanced analytics.
Proven experience influencing senior leaders with data-driven insights.
Experience with analytics platforms, cloud technologies workflow tools and GenAI-enabled solutions.
Demonstrated ability to lead teams, scale capabilities, and drive change in complex organizations.
Experience and/or deep knowledge in respiratory and chronic diseases
Brand Strategy
Business Analysis
Capability Development
Commercial Analytics
Commercial Strategies
Customer Engagement
Customer Segmentation
Customer Service Improvement
Data Science
Demand Management
Digital Analytics
Digital Platforms
Innovation
Marketing
Marketing Leadership
Requirements Management
Sourcing and Procurement
Stakeholder Relationship Management
Strategic Planning
Workflow Automation

Nice To Haves

MBA or Master’s or Doctorate degree in Decision Science, Marketing, Engineering, Public Health, Biological Sciences, Nursing, Pharmacy, Mathematics, Economy, Statistics, Computer Science, Medical Sciences is preferred.
Current Employees apply HERE
Current Contingent Workers apply HERE
US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:
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 place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Responsibilities

Engage with disease aligned teams and leaders across the US commercial organizations to understand their strategic priorities across the commercial value chain. Can translate priorities into business needs and enable interconnected problem solving.
Be a thought leader and strategic partner for commercial teams and senior marketing leaders. Engage, influence and, if needed, challenge business partners as an equal partner.
Establish and manage close relationships with partners and stakeholders within DHH, marketing, sales, business operations, medical and finance.
Lead other Associate Directors, Senior Specialists and Specialists with direct line management responsibility.
The candidate should be able to lead their own teams and cross-functional insights Pods, comprised of cross-functional stakeholder groups across DHH and other parts of the organization.
Articulate how the work, done till date, ties to business priorities, identify unmet needs and gaps that needs to be addressed.
Develop a plan to address the additional needs and/or gaps to enable brand and commercial strategy by working with the functional leaders across the Digital Human Health (DHH) organization.
Serve as a subject matter expert in Commercial Optimization, customer segmentation, targeting, predictive models & prescriptive analytics and as trusted advisor to inform commercial customer engagement decisions.
Drive the implementation of new analytics methodologies to optimize personal and non-personal resource management decisions for the brand and in support of the larger portfolio.
Work closely with stakeholders and expert analytics leaders to translate priorities into business needs and enable interconnected problem solving, aligned to business goals.
Simplify complex analytical methods for diverse audiences and ensure clear understanding of investment decisions across teams.
Lead utilization of modern platforms and technologies (e.g. Prescriptive Analytics, GenAI, Agentic frameworks).
Develop proofs of concept (POCs) to pilot and scale new analytics capabilities and technologies.
Own end-to-end workflow automation to improve speed, scalability, and decision enablement.
Champion adoption of new analytics methodologies and tools across the organization.
Work with marketing leadership to prioritize the work that needs to be done considering the capacity availability within DHH.
Understand the key takeaways from work done till date (across DHH) and enable insight syndication.