senior director, targets and mechanisms solutions 4961122

Technology impacts everything we do. Pfizer’s digital and ‘data first’ strategy focuses on implementing impactful and innovative technology solutions across all functions from research to manufacturing. Whether you are digitizing drug discovery and development, identifying solutions, or making our work easier and faster, you will be making a difference to countless lives.

Pfizer’s purpose, breakthroughs that change patients’ lives, is rooted in being a science driven and patient focused company. Digital, data, and technology are central to driving innovation at Pfizer.

The Senior Director, Targets and Mechanisms Solutions, as part of the R&D Creation Center’s Discovery, Pre-Clinical, and Translational Solutions Team, will lead strategic direction, product management, and AI-driven innovation for Pfizer’s Targets and Mechanisms platforms and systems. You will oversee a global team responsible for delivering scalable, sustainable, and science-centric solutions that power research execution across Pfizer and any in-scope external partners. As a senior leader, you will drive strategic planning for your organizations platforms and systems, integrating advanced technologies including AI, data pipelines, and predictive analytics to enhance efficiency and decision-making.

The ideal candidate has experience at the intersection of research and digital technologies including enterprise-level systems, with passion to make a difference at scale, a commitment to growing others, and the curiosity and courage to experiment and innovate in the ever changing digital and healthcare landscape.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

Targets and Mechanisms Solutions Enablement

In collaboration with Digital & Technology peers and Pfizer R&D business stakeholder team members, the Senior Director, Targets and Mechanisms Solutions, will deliver technical services including ecosystem architecture, quality, analytics, and data management to design, build, and deliver innovative, cost effective, and sustainable solutions to identify biological targets for therapeutic modulation.  The work you and your team will do will enable:

• Pfizer’s Research Units (RUs): Oncology, Vaccines, Internal Medicine, Inflammation & Immunology (I&I), and Integrative Biology (IB)

• Understanding disease pathophysiology

• Target Identification, qualification, and selection

• Leveraging large-scale omics data quantitatively to generate therapeutic hypotheses

• Mining scientific literature and proprietary data

• Supporting reverse-translational efforts from clinical data

• Shape preclinical model strategy to ensure human relevance and de-risk efficacy and safety

• Build translational biomarker frameworks that link preclinical insights to early clinical decisions

• Prioritize indications and expansion opportunities using genetics, multi-omics, and competitive intelligence

Vision and Strategy

• Defines and owns the vision and strategy for digital Targets and Mechanisms Solutions capabilities, with an additional focus on AI innovation and the development of product capability roadmaps to support Pfizer's research strategy with cutting-edge digital technologies.

• Defines and owns the Ecosystem Architecture architecting a modular, interoperable digital ecosystem that integrates scientific data products, metadata frameworks, and platform interoperability across systems and enables AI technologies across the value chain.

• Anticipates technology trends supporting business capabilities in area of remit with an additional focus on AI to prioritize investments that provide a competitive advantage and align with new technology and business practices within the research domain.

• Collaborates across Digital & Technology and business areas to select, pilot, and scale emerging innovations and technologies that drive Pfizer's research strategy forward.

• Continuously identify external solutions and have an awareness of best practices from competitors.  

• Participation / Leading of pre-competitive consortia as applicable.

Strategic Leadership

• Establishes and matures a strategic product and platform operating model to drive scalable innovation.

• Operationalizes emerging technologies through robust governance frameworks to ensure alignment with business objectives, regulatory, and compliance requirements (as required).

• As required, designs and leads a strategic vendor framework to manage high-impact partnerships with critical vendors, ensuring measurable quality delivery and support.

• Launches and scales AI program(s) to embed AI into core workflows and to build process mining capabilities to uncover operational inefficiencies and inform continuous improvement strategies.

Program Delivery Leadership

• Accountable for global Digital & Technology program delivery, overseeing technology implementation across all supporting areas, with responsibility for business case, supporting key performance metrics and financial management for highly complex continuous delivery activities.

• Responsibilities include delivery of global, enterprise, software-as-a-service solutions, and as needed custom software development solutions.

• Oversee the delivery management and engineering leadership of your portfolio of digital programs and projects.

• Demonstrated command of software development methodologies and solution delivery processes and practices (Agile, Waterfall, DevSecOps) with strong leadership and accountability for business outcomes.

• Financial responsibilities include accurate financial and resource forecasting, meticulous cost and budget management, strategic sourcing with robust supplier partnerships, and monitoring earned value to ensure project and business success.

• Ensure GxP solutions are continuously audit- and inspection-ready by maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements, proactively identifying and addressing gaps, and supporting successful internal and external audits and inspections.

Team Leadership

• Recognized as a leader to anticipate, oversee and influence an environment of continuous improvement and innovation while continuously delivering highly complex solutions.  Also accountable to influence areas outside their own expertise, as an individual and as a member of a leadership team and is accountable for decisions within Division or Global Business Unit.

• Mentors and coaches team members fostering a culture of innovation, diversity, collaboration and continuous improvement.

• Cultivates expertise and champions learning, reskilling, and talent growth across Digital and Pfizer.

• Develops solutions to highly complex or unique problems, often outside area of expertise, as an individual or as a member of a leadership team and is accountable for decisions across business units.

Strategic Relationships

• Cultivates strong partnerships with research leaders and is a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, aligning Digital & Technology strategy with evolving research needs while translating complex capabilities into actionable business value.

• Build strong relationships and collaborate across cross-functional Digital & Technology teams, ensuring alignment, shared ownership, and collective success in delivering impactful research solutions.

• Fosters collaboration between research and Digital & Technology innovation teams to accelerate solution delivery, while representing digital R&D in enterprise-wide planning to embed clinical priorities into technology roadmaps.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline.

• 12+ years life sciences experience preferred or equivalent experience leading platforms and large-scale systems

• 10+ years of experience in a leadership capacity with increasing scope of responsibility

• Demonstrated ability to create and implement high impact strategic plans in a large, matrixed global organization

• Demonstrated ability and experience in technology solutions delivery in a pharmaceutical or regulated environment with demonstrated capabilities managing large scale, enterprise software requirements definition, designs and implementations in global 24-by-7 environments

• Must be a successful and engaging leader/manager, with proven capabilities in using talent and succession planning processes to establish plans for managing talent inside and outside the organization and for improving diverse leadership bench strength.  Proven ability to mentor technical leaders; recruit and retain top talent and develop colleagues

• Proven success as a data-centric, innovative, business-minded technology leader, ideally with:

  • Experience managing large-scale scientific, clinical and operational data

  • Familiarity with data collection, aggregation, transformation, and creation of analytics

• Proven experience leading product management teams or functions, with accountability for strategy, execution, and cross-functional alignment

• Flexibility and adaptability to work autonomously or collaboratively in a matrix environment

• Demonstrated track record of leading large, global technical teams in developing enterprise-scale technology and solution strategies

• Must have proven ability to manage communication as a vehicle to ensure alignment of strategies and day-to-day operations to team members and business unit partners in support of commercial digital products, services and experiences

• Ability to gain credibility with senior leadership and effectively influence and collaborate

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Master of Science degree in Information Management, Computer Science, Engineering or Technology Management.

• 10+ years of experience with advanced degree with progressive leadership growth.

• Experience building and scaling the product management discipline within an organization, including defining frameworks, processes, and talent development strategies.

• Experience specifically in pharmaceutical clinical development

• Coding or hands-on experience with software engineering

• Previous experience with ‘omics analysis

Certifications/ Training

• Project Management Professions (PMP) Certification.
  Agile Certification

Candidate demonstrates a breadth of diverse leadership experiences and capabilities including: the ability to influence and collaborate with peers, develop and coach others, oversee and guide the work of other colleagues to achieve meaningful outcomes and create business impact.

NON-STANDARD WORK SCHEDULE, TRAVEL OR ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS

• Limited expectations for travel; candidates must be capable of travel within the region, to other regions.

• Digital is a 7x24x365 endeavor.

• This role may require physical or virtual participation on a weekend, holiday, or after normal business hours.