Senior Director, PHAROS Program

USP•Rockville, MD

17d•Onsite

About The Position

USP’s PHAROS Program (Pharmaceutical Holistic Authentication, Reference Intelligence, and Outcome Screening) is the answer to ARPA=H’s FASTPaSS initiative to develop and deploy rapid, through-package screening for all drugs entering the United States at the border. USP has assembled a winning coalition of organizations that include MIT Research Laboratory for Electronics, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, Physical Sciences, Inc., the Martinos Center, LookIn, Inc., InforMetrix, Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing, National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, and STAQ Pharma. The Senior Director, PHAROS Program will lead USP’s multidisciplinary initiative integrating advanced sensing, AI/ML-enabled analytics, multimodal data fusion, reference science, and physical product development. The role has end-to-end accountability for program execution across USP and consortium partners, including technical integration, partner coordination, prototype development, field testing, risk management, and sponsor commitments. The successful candidate will combine strong program leadership and physical product/system development experience with technical depth in either Technical Area 1 (TA1) - Rapid, through-package sensing - or Technical Area 2 (TA2) - AI/ML-driven quality decision engine. Expertise in both technical areas is not required but would be welcome. As part of our mission to advance scientific rigor and public health standards, you will play a vital role in increasing global access to high-quality medicines through public standards and related programs. USP prioritizes scientific integrity, regulatory excellence, and evidence-based decision-making to ensure health systems worldwide can rely on strong, tested, and globally relevant quality standards. Additionally, USP’s People and Culture division, in partnership with the Equity Office, invests in leadership and workforce development to equip all employees with the skills to create high-performing, inclusive teams. This includes training in equitable management practices and tools to promote engaged, collaborative, and results-driven work environments.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in relevant scientific, engineering, computing, or quantitative discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Minimum 12 years of relevant experience, including leadership of complex scientific, engineering, technology, or product-development programs.
At least five years of accountable program, product, or technical leadership experience involving multiple workstreams, external partners, or matrixed teams.
Experience in pharmaceutical science, analytical technologies, compendial science, or regulatory science.
Technical depth in at least one PHAROS-relevant TA1 or TA2 discipline.
Demonstrated ability to lead across organizational boundaries, make complex technical and programmatic tradeoffs, manage risk, and drive results.
Strong executive, technical, written, and interpersonal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree in a relevant discipline.
Demonstrated experience leading development or integration of a physical or digital-physical product/system, including prototype development, systems integration, verification/validation, and field or operational testing.
Experience with advanced sensing/instrumentation, AI/ML, chemometrics, signal processing, or multimodal analytics.
Experience with systems engineering, hardware/software integration, requirements management, human factors, or field-deployable technology.
Experience leading multi-institutional industry, academic, government, healthcare, or nonprofit partnerships.
Experience with federally sponsored advanced technology programs such as ARPA-H, DARPA, BARDA, FDA, or DoD.
Experience transitioning prototypes toward operational products or sustained programs.

Responsibilities

Lead integrated PHAROS execution, including scope, milestones, deliverables, resources, dependencies, risks, and sponsor commitments to ensure the ultimate program deliverable is realized – a field-deployable prototype that meets all program requirements by the end of 4.5 years.
With the dedicated support from the GHMS Program Delivery Team, coordinate USP teams, technical leaders, and external consortium partners to deliver an integrated program outcome.
Lead development of PHAROS as a hardware-software-data system, from requirements and architecture through prototype integration, verification, validation, and field testing.
Drive iterative design-build-test cycles and progression toward a reliable, usable, field-deployable solution.
Establish effective program governance, decision-making, risk management, performance reviews, and partner accountability.
Make and facilitate cross-program technical and programmatic tradeoffs while preserving the scientific leadership of the Co-Principal Investigators.
Contribute technical expertise from either TA1—such as analytical science, spectroscopy, NMR, sensing, instrumentation, or pharmaceutical science—or TA2—such as AI/ML, chemometrics, signal processing, multimodal fusion, or digital decision systems.
Apply systems thinking to evaluate evidence, challenge assumptions, manage technical interfaces, and resolve integration issues.
Leverage USP’s standards, reference science, Expert Committees, industry relationships, and sample-access capabilities to strengthen PHAROS development and validation.
Represent PHAROS with ARPA-H, consortium partners, industry and healthcare stakeholders, and USP leadership.
Provides direct and matrix leadership across PHAROS program resources, USP technical teams, TA1 and TA2 Co-PIs, consortium partner leads, and product-development/integration teams.