Senior Director, Scientific Affairs & Medical Education

Achieve Life Sciences

3d•$290,000 - $310,000•Remote

About The Position

The Senior Director, Scientific Affairs & Medical Education will set scientific standards and lead medical review, medical education strategy, and scientific dissemination as Achieve Life Sciences prepares for the potential commercial launch of cytisinicline. The role owns scientific integrity across Medical Affairs materials and programs, ensures consistent scientific positioning across the Clinical Council, and serves as the formal Medical Affairs liaison to Commercial on scientific messaging. It sets direction and standards, while content production and day-to-day hub operations remain with their respective leads. The position reports to the SVP, Medical Affairs, with a dotted line to the Chief Medical Officer. It is remote, with candidates eligible to reside anywhere in the continental United States, and may require travel of up to 25% for conferences, medical education programs, company meetings, and other business needs.

Requirements

MD, PhD, PharmD, or another advanced scientific or clinical degree appropriate to the role.
10+ years of experience in Medical Affairs, medical communications, or agency-side medical strategy.
Direct experience as an MLR medical reviewer.
Deep working knowledge of FDA promotional requirements, scientific exchange, the PhRMA Code, and ACCME standards.
Demonstrated success developing medical education strategies and multichannel scientific dissemination programs.
Ability to balance commercial priorities with scientific rigor and communicate boundaries constructively.
Strong cross-functional leadership and stakeholder management skills.
Experience building processes and capabilities in a growing organization.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting a pharmaceutical product launch.
Background in substance use disorder, addiction medicine, tobacco treatment, or a related therapeutic area.

Responsibilities

Serve as the Medical Affairs lead reviewer in the Medical, Legal, and Regulatory (MLR) process for promotional and non-promotional materials, including scientific exchange, medical education, and launch materials.
Own scientific substantiation requirements, claims matrices, references, annotations, and alignment with approved prescribing information and the scientific platform.
Develop MLR SOPs, review timelines, and reviewer training in partnership with Legal, Regulatory, and Compliance.
Determine the educational materials needed, intended audiences, and sequence, ensuring content development aligns with medical priorities.
Establish strategy for residency curricula and education across primary care, internal medicine, family medicine, hospital medicine, pulmonary, and other priority specialties.
Guide independent medical education grant strategy and review while maintaining appropriate independence and compliance with ACCME Standards for Integrity and Independence.
Maintain consistent scientific positioning across the scientific platform and Clinical Council subdomain hubs, partnering with the Council Chair, hub Chairs, and internal hub leads on cross-hub priorities and program-level positioning.
Serve as the formal Medical Affairs interface with Commercial leadership on cytisinicline scientific messaging, supporting business needs without compromising scientific integrity.
Develop and execute dissemination partnerships with specialty societies, continuing education platforms, EHR integration partners, quit lines, and public health organizations.
Apply FDA requirements for promotion and scientific exchange, the PhRMA Code, and applicable pre-approval communication standards to medical strategy and materials.