Senior Director, US Field Excellence & Operations

Cytokinetics is a late-stage, specialty cardiovascular biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing first-in-class muscle activators and next-in-class muscle inhibitors as potential treatments for debilitating diseases in which cardiac muscle performance is compromised. As a leader in muscle biology and the mechanics of muscle performance, the company is developing small molecule drug candidates specifically engineered to impact myocardial muscle function and contractility.

Job purpose

The Senior Director, US field Excellence and Operations is accountable for, providing analytical and operational expertise to the Cytokinetics customer-facing organization, in preparation for launch and commercialization of aficamten and future pipeline products.  This role offers the opportunity to be a key driver of the successful launch of aficamten across Sales and Marketing and is part of a highly engaged, collaborative customer facing team.  This Individual will report directly into the ED, Operations Strategy and Business Insights

Responsibilities

The Senior Director is a key business partner to Commercial (e.g. Sales, Market Access, IT, Marketing) leaders and will lead a team responsible for the design and execution of targeting, sizing and deployment, sales goals, and compensation plans that incentivize the desired behaviors and enable the sales team to reach its goals compliantly

Augmented Sales Analytics (Data)

• Maintain and evolve human and technology infrastructure for sales analytics, sales reporting, artificial intelligence, and secondary analytics.
• Be expert at translating data and information into meaningful insights and recommendations to create personalized call plans for key customers in the community and institution settings including “disruption” and “white space” analysis.
• End-to-end ownership of Incentive Compensation including plan design, operationalization, compliance, and monitoring.
• Improve the precision, customization of call planning based on advanced quantitative data analyses leveraging multiple datasets for Hospital and Cardiology Teams
• Collaborate with the Sr. Director, Forecasting & Commercial Analytics to enhance targeting, effectiveness and ROI assessments of Brand Strategies and Tactics
• Proactively identify “real-world” opportunities and gaps in strategy/tactical execution through strong engagement with field-based colleagues.
• Monitor the external environment to stay up to date on leading analytic capabilities, both within and outside of pharma, which can be applied within the organization.
• Understand database structure and processes and contribute to the development and execution of effective data mining including dataset preparation, data cleansing/audits, data exploration, modeling, model deployment, and model assessment.
• Lead and conduct quarterly functional reviews to share insights and analysis on business, brand, and market issues.

Commercial Operations (Build and IT)
Establish sales operations requirements for customer facing organization sizing, targeting, and deployment, sample management, fleet management, tools to support implementation of digital strategy, incentive compensation, and field force reporting. Inform sales force size and structure for full pipeline throughout the life cycles.

• Collaborate with IT to design, build, and maintain all commercial technology solutions (including Veeva CRM, speaker management solutions, KOL database tools, commercial data warehouse, analytics/reporting platform, and others as required). Track and report key metrics for building and maintain platforms related to these programs.
• Lead implementation for devices and software in collaboration with IT to enable video details.
• Maintain and evolve (in conjunction with IT) a field support function, providing one-stop service hub for field users to support hardware, applications, materials, etc.
• Manage product sample distribution system and automobile/fleet program for customer facing organization.
• Lead annual projects at the request of Commercial leadership, which may include field force structure sizing and deployment, resource allocation, performance reporting, and field technology innovation projects
• Conduct sub-national growth drivers analyses and working closely with market access and data science teams to build local resource allocation models and pull through strategies.
• Support Senior Leadership deliverables such as Board of Director reviews, Ql Business Reviews, Company Meetings, and more.

Digital Implementation

• Responsible for identifying, developing, and implementing a customer facing digital implementation plan consistent with the marketing digital strategy.
• Identify tools and resources that can be used by the customer facing teams to support implementation of a seamless digital strategy program
• Responsible for working with IT to identify and deploy technologies for implementation of digital resources for the customer facing teams
• Develop a tracking tool to report progress with execution of the customer facing teams’ digital strategy
• Continuously seek out and report on innovative approaches for implementation of the customer facing digital strategy

Leadership

• Develop and communicate the short and long-term vision and goals for the team. Ensure alignment with the broader organizational objectives and drive strategic initiatives. Set clear performance expectations, provide coaching, mentorship, and growth opportunities and foster open, transparent communication with the team.
• Foster an inclusive, positive, and high-performance team culture where all voices are heard and valued.  Lead by example in promoting Core Values. Cultivate an environment that encourages flexibility, resilience, and adaptability in response to evolving challenges and opportunities.

• Build strong relationships with key stakeholders across departments, ensuring alignment on priorities and fostering collaboration and decision making between teams. Act as a bridge between senior leadership and the team, advocating for resources, and ensuring that strategic priorities are executed at the operational level.

Qualifications

• 12-15 years of work experience in sales, sales operations, sales consulting, Finance, or other analytical role in pharma/biotech industries
• Knowledge of sales incentive compensation concepts, workforce sizing, territory alignment, segmentation and targeting
• Knowledge of common industry data assets and vendors such as IQVIA, Symphony, DRG, MMIT and Specialty Pharmacy and Distributor data
• Strong analytical skills and the ability to aggregate and analyze disparate data to provide business insights and inform strategy
• Knowledge of field communications, meetings, training and digital strategy implementation
• Strong working knowledge of standard business software tools (e.g. MS Excel, Access, MS Word & PowerPoint, etc.) is required. Experience driving the build and support of commercial technology applications (such as CRM) required. Knowledge of SQL, and/or other BI tools (Tableau, Microstrategy, etc.) or analytics tools (R, Alteryx, RapidMiner, etc.) is preferred.
• In-depth knowledge and data mining experience using secondary subnational prescription and sales data required.
• Ability to autonomously manage multiple projects at a fast pace
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Be able to work efficiently in a cross-functional and matrixed environment
• Comfortable working with sales leadership team; ability to influence at all levels in the Organization

Our employees come from different backgrounds, and we celebrate those differences. We are looking for the best candidates for our open roles, but do not expect applicants to meet every qualification in order to be considered. If you are excited about what you could accomplish at Cytokinetics and believe you can add value to our team, we would love to hear from you.

Please review our General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) policy PRIOR to applying.  

Our passion is anchored in robust scientific thinking, grounded in integrity and critical thinking. We keep the patient front and center in all we do – all actions and decisions are in service of the patient and their caregivers. We champion integrity, ethics, doing the right thing, and being our best selves.

Fraud Warning: How to Identify Impersonated Cytokinetics Job Postings and Offers

Recently, there have been fraudulent employment offers being sent to candidates on behalf of Cytokinetics. Please be advised that all legitimate offers from Cytokinetics will come directly from our official email domain (Cytokinetics.com) and will only be made after completing a formal interview process.

Here are some ways to check for authenticity:

• We do not conduct job interviews through non-standard text messaging applications
• We will never request personal information such as banking details until after an official offer has been accepted and verified
• We will never request that you purchase equipment or other items when interviewing or hiring
• If you are unsure about the authenticity of an offer, or if you receive any suspicious communication, please contact us directly at talentacquisition@cytokinetics.com

Please visit our website at: www.cytokinetics.com

Cytokinetics is an Equal Opportunity Employer