Job Description

The Associate Director, Business Insights Analytics will be responsible for developing and communicating data-driven and actionable insights that drive greater customer and market understanding to inform launch & go-to market strategies and help meet in-line commercial objectives. 

The individual in this role will be an independent contributor as well as lead a team and, together, will act as the Commercial Insight & Analytics Lead for US marketing teams. The ideal candidate will lead an insight team consisting of functional teams across market research, data strategy, forecasting, resource effectiveness, measurement, marketing/sales operations, digital analytics, competitive insights and strategy. This person will help scope, design, and deliver well-defined projects and insights; and track value ‘at stake’ and value realized. 

The preferred candidate should have intellectual curiosity, entrepreneurial spirit, consultative mindset, strong understanding of healthcare & pharma marketing.  The person should be able to identify the data, analytics and research needs to define, enable, and inform commercial strategies of our brand and business leaders. The selected candidate should have a good understanding of US data landscape, commercial analytics capabilities, and technology.  This person should have demonstrated the ability to create structure, break down unstructured problem statements into solvable chunks, articulate what needs to be answered through new pieces of research and what needs to be addressed through secondary data driven analytics.  The candidate should have strong cardiovascular and metabolic expertise/therapeutic area knowledge.

This role will require interfacing and collaborating with many teams. The candidate should demonstrate consistently strong leadership skills.  The person will have a growth mindset and embody a culture of continuous learning. Effective communication skills are essential for a candidate to be successful in this role.

Responsibilities:

• Leadership and Mentorship: Lead a team of business analysts, providing guidance on best practices in data analytics, data visualization and storytelling with data.
• Business Translation: Translate complex business needs and priorities into analytical plans, providing actionable insights and effectively communicating advanced analytics to inform business decisions.
• Collaboration: Work closely with HHDDA colleagues (i.e., data visualization, data solutions) and Marketing stakeholders to deliver best-in-class solutions and data-driven insights.
• Project Management. Manage analytics and digital solutions projects to deliver actionable and meaningful insights to marketing stakeholders in a timely manner.
• Staying Abreast with Industry Trends: Stay current with industry trends and advancements in analytical methodologies to enhance organizational analytic capabilities.
• Innovation and Experimentation with Agile Mindset in Mind: Contribute to innovative experimentations, focusing on idea generation, incubation, and using tangible, measurable criteria to make incremental meaningful improvements to the business processes and strategies using data.

The following skills and knowledge are needed to be successful in this role:

• Understanding of the Disease Space, Business Acumen and Analytics Expertise: Deep understanding of the unique opportunities and challenges in the pharma and rare disease space and ability to use analytics to solve business problems.
• Communication and Storytelling: Derive actionable business insights from secondary-data sources and communicate them effectively to business stakeholders.
• Decision Making and Critical Thinking: Identify and understand problems and opportunities, analyze quantitative and qualitative information, establish decision criteria, generate and evaluate alternatives, and make timely decisions.
• Emotional Intelligence: Build trust, encourage two-way communication, and strengthen relationships. Able to navigate relationships with stakeholders while achieving business results.
• Networking and Partnerships: Build and leverage relationships within and across stakeholder groups and within HHDDA to achieve results.
• Complex Data Management: Substantial experience in interpreting complex datasets, particularly patient claims data.

Requirements for Education, Experience, and Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field (Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, Statistics, Decision Science, Marketing, Engineering, Public Health, etc.)
• 5+ years of relevant experience delivering complex analytical projects in the pharmaceutical/biotech/healthcare industry
• Prior hands-on experience working with healthcare business performance data

Preferred Education, Experience and Skills:

• MBA, MS, or PhD
• Pharma and/ or Rare Disease therapeutic area expertise
• Delivers statistical and mathematical models through effective technical skills
• Develops efficient programming code and software assets that provide advanced analytical functionality.
• Creates analytical products (product parts) as a part of broader teams
• Understands the business context, challenge, limitation, constraints and goals to effectively match the capability of the statistical and mathematical and M/L approaches to the business, scientific and operational challenge
• Ensures advanced analytics support to decision making and business process tasks is understood, adopted and embedded as a part of regular business activities
• Promotes a collaborative and high performing data driven culture across the company and high quality delivery standards among fellow data scientists
• Includes specializations within domains, such as therapeutic area and data assets (e.g., claims, EMR)
• Sometimes specific roles include incremental skills pertaining to AI and M/L methods, Marketing Effectiveness Measurement, or test vs control and design of experiments.
• Analyze data using advanced analytical/statistical techniques from various databases/sources (claims data/EMR data and other sources) to optimize and improve therapy area commercial business strategies.
• Ensure delivery of high-quality, timely, compliant analyses with excellent user experience (keep clients updated on progress).
• Communicate with other platforms/competencies to understand new trends/methodologies being implemented or considered within the company ecosystem and bring forward new ideas to enhance analytic capabilities.
• Contribute to innovative experiments, including idea generation, incubation, and experimentation, by identifying tangible and measurable criteria.
• Effectively communicate with and influence stakeholders positively.

Position location: Upper Gwynedd, PA or Rahway, NJ.
Ideal candidate should have the flexibility to be on site at least 3 days a week in Upper Gwynedd, PA and/or Rahway, NJ

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.  As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.  For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

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We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

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U.S. Hybrid Work Model

Effective September 5, 2023, employees in office-based positions in the U.S. will be working a Hybrid work consisting of three total days on-site per week, Monday - Thursday, although the specific days may vary by site or organization, with Friday designated as a remote-working day, unless business critical tasks require an on-site presence.This Hybrid work model does not apply to, and daily in-person attendance is required for, field-based positions; facility-based, manufacturing-based, or research-based positions where the work to be performed is located at a Company site; positions covered by a collective-bargaining agreement (unless the agreement provides for hybrid work); or any other position for which the Company has determined the job requirements cannot be reasonably met working remotely. Please note, this Hybrid work model guidance also does not apply to roles that have been designated as “remote”.

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

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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:

Yes

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Not Applicable

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

N/A

Required Skills:

Brand Management, Brand Management, Business, Business Administration, Business Data Analytics, Business Intelligence (BI), Business Management, Business Processes, Business Process Improvements, Business Process Modeling, Business Translations, Client Management, Commercial Analytics, Communication, Critical Thinking, Database Design, Data Engineering, Data Forecasting, Data Insights, Data Modeling, Data Science, Data Visualization, Digital Analytics, Go-to-Market Strategies, Machine Learning {+ 14 more}

Preferred Skills:

Job Posting End Date:

05/15/2025

*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.