Dir , Patient Strategy & Innovation lead

Our Digital Human Health (DHH) team is transforming how we engage with and support patients throughout their healthcare journey.  We are at the forefront of building a more connected, personalized, and seamless patient experience, which will be critical to helping patients to benefit from our upcoming launch products.  Working cross-functionally, we are inventing new ways of leveraging digital, data, and analytics to improve health outcomes and deliver on our "patient-first" mission.

Reporting to the Executive Director, Digital Patient Experience, the Director, Patient Strategy & Innovation Lead will be instrumental in executing our patient-centric vision. This new role will lead the strategy, engagement, and program management for patient-focused initiatives, working in tight partnership with the Patient CoE in the US Commercial Excellence & Innovation (CEI) team and US marketing brand teams.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Strategic Leadership & Execution: Lead the strategic development and execution of patient engagement programs, ensuring alignment with broader DHH and Human Health objectives.

• Partnership & Ecosystem Development: Identify, cultivate, and manage innovative external partnerships that enhance our patient support offerings and accelerate our digital patient capabilities.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Serve as the primary liaison between the DHH Patient Capabilities team, the US CEI Patient CoE, and US marketing brand teams to ensure seamless integration and deployment of patient initiatives.

• Program Management: Oversee the end-to-end program management of key patient experience projects, ensuring they are delivered on time, within budget, and achieve defined success metrics.

• Future Patient Strategy: Act as a champion for patient-centric innovation, gathering internal and external best practices to continuously evolve how our company's supports patients throughout their treatment journey.  Drive visioning for continued evolution of our patient strategy and the digital, data, and analytics capabilities needed to enable this.

• Bachelor's degree

• 10+ years of relevant experience in patient support, patient engagement, digital health strategy, program management, or commercial operations within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or healthcare industry.

• 5+ years of experience managing complex, cross-functional programs or teams in a highly matrixed environment.

• Proven track record of developing and executing strategic patient engagement or marketing initiatives.

• Strong understanding of the US healthcare ecosystem, including patient support programs, access, and reimbursement dynamics.

• Excellent relationship-building and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence without direct authority across brand and enterprise teams.

• Advanced degree (e.g., MBA, MPH).

• Prior experience specifically working within or closely partnering with a commercial patient support Center of Excellence (CoE).

• Demonstrated experience in evaluating, negotiating, and managing digital health partnerships or vendor relationships.

• Familiarity with agile methodologies and digital product development lifecycles.

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Where required by law, the compensation range for this role is provided below.

The salary range for the primary location of this role is:

This range reflects the Company's reasonable expectation of the base salary applicable to this role at the time of posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs. The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.