Job Description

Mission

• Leverage data science and AI to improve the efficiency and quality of commercial operations. Build a closed loop from target setting, resource allocation, execution monitoring to review and optimization, continuously enhancing coverage quality, call effectiveness, channel sell-through health, and compliance to deliver attributable impact for brand and therapeutic area growth.

Key Responsibilities

• Commercial excellence strategy and operating rhythm: Partner with Sales, Marketing, Compliance, and Finance to identify key levers to improve commercial efficiency; define the annual roadmap and OKRs and embed them into the QBR cadence; establish a unified metric and methodology handbook (KPI/KRI dictionary, attribution definitions, data lineage).

• Targeting and coverage, quota and territory optimization: Develop HCP/HCO segmentation and potential scoring, white-space identification and target lists; provide recommendations on coverage and call frequency; design fair quota and territory schemes, optimize territory boundaries and call routes; build performance insights and action plans.

• Channel and sell-through health: Build sell-through forecasting and inventory health monitoring (stock-out/slow-moving alerts, replenishment recommendations); evaluate distributor performance and optimize channel structure; conduct price and discount consistency and compliance analyses, and jointly establish early warning and governance with Finance/Legal.

• Data productization and engineering governance: Build commercial feature and labeling assets (HCP/HCO profiles, access/payment environment, channel/territory tags, behavioral and stickiness features) to drive reuse and versioning; establish end-to-end delivery and governance (model registry, CI/CD, online/batch scoring, monitoring and drift alerts, rollback, audit trail and documentation); develop frontline self-service analytics and action-oriented dashboards integrated with CRM/business systems and BI platforms.

• Organizational influence and change management: Support managerial decisions with explainable results and create a “insight–action–review” loop; recruit and develop cross-disciplinary talent; establish technical reviews and post-mortems, and codify cases and methodologies; raise frontline data literacy and usage stickiness.

• Compliance and data ethics: Adhere to promotional compliance and privacy regulations (GDPR/CCPA/local requirements); implement data classification, minimal-use principles, and PII de-identification/anonymization; manage third-party data compliance through vendor assessment, contractual controls, audit trails, and access controls.

Qualifications

• Education and background: Bachelor’s degree or above in Statistics, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Economics or related fields (Master/PhD preferred); 7–10 years of experience in data science/commercial analytics, with ≥3 years of team management or technical leadership; experience in pharma commercial operations/commercial excellence preferred.

• Skills and experience:

• • Business scenarios: Targeting and coverage strategy, quota and territory design, sell-through and inventory forecasting, channel health and price/discount compliance, marketing ROI and MMM, market access impact assessment.

  • Methods and tools: Machine learning (classification/regression/ranking, clustering, time series), causal inference and quasi-experiments (matching, difference-in-differences, synthetic control), optimization (linear/integer programming, heuristics).

  • Tech stack: Python (Pandas/NumPy/Scikit-learn/Statsmodels), SQL, BI (Power BI/Tableau/Looker), big data and orchestration (Spark, Airflow/Dagster), LLMs, etc.

  • Governance and explainability: SHAP/LIME, feature/model drift monitoring, bias and fairness assessment, audit-ready documentation.

• Soft skills: Strong commercial acumen and operational understanding; outstanding cross-functional communication, influence, and change management; proven team building and coaching ability to foster a learning-oriented and delivery-focused culture.

Required Skills:

Business Intelligence (BI), Commercial Analytics, Computer Science, Data Analysis, Database Design, Data Classification, Data Engineering, Data Modeling, Data Science, Data Visualization, Machine Learning (ML), Statistics, Waterfall Model

Preferred Skills:

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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 in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

No Travel Required

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Not Applicable

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

02/28/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.