Project Director, Advanced Supply Chain Solutions

The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) is an independent scientific organization that collaborates with the world’s leading health and science experts to develop rigorous quality standards for medicines, dietary supplements, and food ingredients. At USP, we believe that scientific excellence is driven by a commitment to fairness, integrity, and global collaboration. This belief is embedded in our core value of Passion for Quality and is demonstrated through the contributions of more than 1,300 professionals across twenty global locations, working to strengthen the supply of safe, high-quality medicines worldwide.

At USP, we value inclusive scientific collaboration and recognize that attracting diverse expertise strengthens our ability to develop trusted public health standards. We foster an organizational culture that supports equitable access to mentorship, professional development, and leadership opportunities. Our partnerships, standards, and research reflect our belief that ensuring broad participation in scientific leadership results in stronger, more impactful outcomes for global health.

USP is proud to be an equal employment opportunity employer (EEOE) and is committed to ensuring fair, merit-based selection processes that enable the best scientific minds—regardless of background—to contribute to advancing public health solutions worldwide. We provide reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities and uphold policies that create an inclusive and collaborative work environment.

The USP Advanced Manufacturing & Technologies team’s mission through 2030 is to move the medicines industry forward by advancing new ways of making and testing medicines while building competitive, resilient industries. Advanced Supply Chain Solutions is a flagship AMT capability focused on strengthening the resilience of the global pharmaceutical supply chain and enabling greater availability of relied-upon medicines. The Project Director leads a portfolio of donor- and customer-funded initiatives that strengthen pharmaceutical supply chains, expand advanced manufacturing solutions, and translate USP expertise into practical programs. This role serves as Principal Investigator and senior technical lead, with accountability for converting complex customer needs into well-scoped, fundable, and executable work.

As part of our mission to advance scientific rigor and public health standards, you will play a vital role in increasing global access to high-quality medicines through public standards and related programs. USP prioritizes scientific integrity, regulatory excellence, and evidence-based decision-making to ensure health systems worldwide can rely on strong, tested, and globally relevant quality standards.

Additionally, USP’s People and Culture division, in partnership with the Equity Office, invests in leadership and workforce development to equip all employees with the skills to create high-performing, inclusive teams. This includes training in equitable management practices and tools to promote engaged, collaborative, and results-driven work environments.

This is a supervisory role.

Number of direct reports and titles: 1 Scientific Technical Advisor

• Serve as Principal Investigator or senior accountable lead for donor-funded initiatives, with responsibility for scope, quality, timelines, and outcomes.
• Set direction for project planning, delivery cadence, decision-making, risk management, and performance monitoring.
• Translate customer priorities into actionable workplans that are technically credible, financially realistic, and operationally achievable.
• Maintain accountability for implementing contract obligations, donor commitments, internal governance, and sound stewardship of project resources.

• Lead technical work across the AMT solutions portfolio, with emphasis on pharmaceutical supply chain resilience, advanced manufacturing, CMC, and quality.
• Apply scientific and technical judgment to manufacturing readiness, process development, technology transfer, scale-up, GMP manufacturing, and product characterization questions.
• Translate assessments into clear recommendations, implementation approaches, and decision-support products that are rigorous, practical, and fit for purpose.
• Guide technical, regulatory, quality, and supply chain gap assessments, due diligence, and risk-based evaluations.
• Support development of methods, tools, and offerings that strengthen USP’s supply chain, manufacturing, and quality capabilities.

• Engage credibly with customers, public-sector stakeholders, donors, and strategic collaborators in discussions that require technical judgment, scientific credibility, and practical implementation insight.
• Build relationships through technical problem-solving, clear communication of USP capabilities, and a practical understanding of customer supply chain and manufacturing challenges.
• Lead technical project discussions with clients to clarify needs, test assumptions, define feasible approaches, and keep stakeholders aligned around scope, expectations, and delivery risks.
• Translate external technical challenges into integrated USP responses by connecting internal expertise across technical and operational areas.

• Recognize where strong delivery can lead to expanded work, adjacent opportunities, or longer-term customer engagement.
• Contribute to capture discussions, proposal strategy, technical narratives, scopes of work, budgets, and customer solution framing.
• Help define customer problems in ways that lead to clear, differentiated, and actionable USP offerings.
• Balance disciplined execution with the leadership needed to sustain and grow an expanding portfolio of work.
  
  

The successful candidate will have a demonstrated understanding of our mission, commitment to excellence through inclusive and equitable behaviors and practices, and the ability to quickly build credibility with stakeholders, along with the following competencies and experience:

• Advanced degree in pharmaceutical sciences, chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, engineering, or a related scientific field; doctoral degree preferred.
• Minimum of 10 years of relevant experience leading technical programs or customer-facing initiatives in pharmaceutical manufacturing, quality or CMC, supply chain, or related areas.
• Minimum of 5 years in an accountable leadership role for externally funded technical work, with responsibility for scope, quality, timelines, budgets, and deliverables.
• Ability to lead complex initiatives involving multiple contributors, workstreams, decision points, compliance considerations, and resource constraints.
• Demonstrated ability to synthesize scientific, manufacturing, quality, regulatory, and supply chain information into practical recommendations.
• Strong communication, judgment, and presence with customers, donors, manufacturers, and senior partners.
• Ability to influence without direct authority and integrate technical, operational, commercial, and programmatic perspectives.
• Demonstrated people management experience.

• Experience with government agencies, multilateral donors, foundations, manufacturers, or other institutional customers.
• Experience developing proposals, scopes of work, technical approaches, donor deliverables, briefing documents, or customer-facing solution offerings.
• Knowledge of pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply chains, including CMC, quality, biologics or small-molecule development, technology transfer, scale-up, or advanced manufacturing.
• Experience with analytical development, validation or transfer, comparability, stability, GMP manufacturing/compliance, or quality.
• Experience conducting scientific reviews, data analysis, technical due diligence, gap assessments, or risk-based evaluations to inform program decisions.
• Program leadership experience, including donor-funded programs, cross-functional team leadership, resource planning, and operational execution.