Executive Director, R&D Program Finance - Foster City, CA

Gilead Sciences•Foster City, CA

5d•Onsite

About The Position

The Executive Director, R&D Program Finance, serves as the senior finance leader responsible for shaping and driving financial strategy across Gilead’s oncology and inflammation portfolio. This leader acts as the strategic business partner to the R&D organization, ensuring that financial insights, rigorous business case evaluations, and value focused decision frameworks meaningfully influence pipeline investment, portfolio optimization, and long range planning. This role leads and develops a high performing Program Finance organization that partners directly with senior executives and their teams across Development, Commercial, PDM, and Finance.

Requirements

Bachelor's Degree and Sixteen Years' Experience OR Masters' Degree and Fourteen Years' Experience OR PhD and Fourteen Years' Experience

Nice To Haves

15+ years in R&D Finance or related strategic finance roles in biopharma.
Strategic, systems‑level thinker who distills complexity into clear, actionable decisions, enabling teams and senior leaders to navigate ambiguity with confidence.
Builder of high‑performing teams and talent, with a strong track record of coaching, elevating emerging leaders, and cultivating an inclusive environment where people can grow and excel.
Executive presence with exceptional storytelling and influence skills , capable of framing insights in a way that shapes decisions, aligns stakeholders, and accelerates enterprise impact.
Proactive change leader who challenges the status quo constructively, inspires continuous improvement, and leads teams through transformation with optimism, resilience, and clarity.
Collaborative, solutions‑oriented partner grounded in Gilead’s Core Values, fostering trust, accountability, and cross‑functional alignment to deliver outcomes that advance the enterprise.
Create Inclusion - knowing the business value of diverse teams, modeling inclusion, and embedding the value of diversity in the way they manage their teams.
Develop Talent - understand the skills, experience, aspirations and potential of their employees and coach them on current performance and future potential. They ensure employees are receiving the feedback and insight needed to grow, develop and realize their purpose.
Empower Teams - connect the team to the organization by aligning goals, purpose, and organizational objectives, and holding them to account. They provide the support needed to remove barriers and connect their team to the broader ecosystem.

Responsibilities

Establish and deliver on vision to position the Program Finance team as a critical strategic partner enabling high‑quality, value‑based decisions across the development portfolio.
Lead the evolution from study‑level cost support to end‑to‑end business case leadership with a focus on value creation.
Build trusted partnerships with SVP/VP stakeholders across Development, Commercial, PDM, and Finance.
Ensure Finance is recognized as a critical and required voice in PC materials, BD materials, and strategic reviews.
Build and develop a diverse, high‑impact team capable of influencing senior R&D leaders and challenging assumptions with data‑driven insights.
Set a high bar for People Leader accountabilities—fostering inclusion, proactive coaching, and rigorous talent development for all leaders in the Program Finance LT.
Assess team capabilities regularly and address gaps related to financial modeling, strategic thinking, communication, and cross‑functional influence.
Oversee high‑quality financial assessments for PC decisions, BD evaluations, Portfolio Review, and Long Range Planning —ensuring financial insights are material, timely, and influence outcomes.
Embed standardized methodologies (e.g., NPV, risk‑adjusted frameworks, scenario modeling) across all program teams.
Drive continuous simplification and automation of financial processes, enabling faster and more reliable insights (e.g., IPE simplification, rolling forecast enablement).
Ensure robust financial governance, policy adherence, and audit‑ready processes (e.g., SOX, EY compliance).