Senior Director Clinical Pharmacology

Certara accelerates the potential of bringing medicines to market and to patients using biosimulation software, technology, and services to transform traditional drug discovery and development. Our clients include more than 2,400 biopharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and regulatory agencies across 70 countries.

Our goal is to enable the life sciences industry’s use of data, modeling, and analytics to make better decisions across the various phases of discovery and drug development. Our software and scientists incorporate modern advances in scientific understanding, drug development experience, data analysis, and AI resulting in significant opportunities to decrease the cost and increase the probability of success for new drug approval and commercialization.

The Senior Director is a leadership role in the business, heading teams, serving as the lead subject matter expert for specific company offerings, and autonomously managing major client accounts and areas of business. Senior Directors are responsible for the efficient delivery of all the business for a particular offering, or identifiable operating unit (e.g., geographic focus) in the organization, and to assure proper resourcing (via internal or outsourced staff) on projects as well as sufficient and appropriate workloads for their team under management.

Senior Directors are responsible to manage and coordinate project teams comprising both their staff under management, as well as staff in other line management to synthesize and prepare client ready deliverables, and to present the work as needed to clients and their extended teams. Senior Directors may have direct line management of a team of multiple staff. Senior Directors have responsibility for developing and refining the offerings of the company, assuring the high quality delivery of those offerings, cultivating client relationships and accounts, and driving new business in both their area of specialization and other business areas of the company.

Responsibilities

• Leads multidisciplinary teams in delivering on the design, execution, strategy and management of various development, clinical pharmacology and regulatory engagements, from early translation to late development.
• Works collaboratively with and leads Certara team members and clients to develop clinical pharmacology and quantitative program strategies that are fit-for-purpose to enable development and regulatory decisions for IND/First in human to NDA/BLA.
• Develops new innovative and impactful clinical pharmacology approaches to processes and drug development strategies and can assemble a multidisciplinary team to execute the components of clinical pharmacology program.
• Leverage quantitative modelling and simulation tools to answer development questions and to design and inform clinical trial designs and clinical development strategy.
• Represent clients at meetings and advisory hearings with global health authorities as a subject matter expert.
• Lead others in authoring and contributes to documents summarizing clinical pharmacology data and program strategy including CSRs, reports, and health authority documents.
• Interpret DMPK data with a focus on translation and applies information to support clinical pharmacology study design and strategy.
• Contributes to training and mentoring for staff, develops junior staff for broader functional roles either as a direct manager or on project teams.
• Interprets and integrates NCA and pharmacometric results to support decision making including evolving clinical pharmacology strategy and development strategy.
• Actively collaborates with multidisciplinary peers (e.g., biostats, clinical, pharm/tox, CMC) and has a working understanding of the multidisciplinary requirements of drug development.
• Co/authoring peer-reviewed manuscripts and publications.
• Reviews publications to keep apprised of new clinical pharmacology and therapeutic area developments.
• Involvement in program committees, workshops, and other professional organization meetings/sessions.
• Participate in company initiatives.
• Leads in business development initiatives and independently generates business development leads and represents respective line function and broader Certara capabilities on client scoping calls.
• Identifies project opportunities, structures WO and budget, formulates teams and identifies needs and resources necessary to execute projects. Authors work orders when necessary.

Qualifications

• Must be recognized applied development practitioner, experienced in both design and stewardship of clinical pharmacology components of clinical development plans and optimal application of pharmacometrics approaches to support decision making and regulatory success.
• PhD or PharmD degree or equivalent degree with specialization in pharmacology or pharmacokinetics, or in a related scientific discipline. MS in Pharmaceutical Science with job related experience in the field of drug development and clinical pharmacology.
• 15+ years of experience including clinical pharmacology experience in the pharmaceutical industry or government.
• Broad therapeutic area and small and/or biologic molecule therapeutics experience.
• Experienced in designing and executing clinical pharmacology studies.
• Experience with translational and clinical pharmacology work at different stages of development and for regulatory submissions (e.g. INDs, NDAs, and BLAs).
• Experience in providing input on clinical pharmacology plans and preparation of regulatory submissions (e.g. INDs, NDAs, BLAs and/or significant sNDAs/sBLAs).
• Demonstrated track record in a functional role on cross functional drug development team.
• Working understanding of the CMC, pharm/tox, biostats, clinical and other multidisciplinary requirements of drug development.
• Experience building and leading successful teams (within and/or across functions).

Skills & Abilities

• Advanced understanding of the clinical pharmacology discipline.
• Strong initiative, self-motivation and demonstrated ability of coordinating multiple projects and/or tasks.
• Possess a strong focus on influencing at high levels, innovation, and customer centricity.
• Strong client and alliance management skills.
• Ability to mentor and develop junior PK scientist on clinical pharmacology science and strategy either as a direct mentor or on project teams.
• Ability to work across functions to implement company initiatives.
• Excellent written, verbal and inter-personal communications skills.
• Must be able to work well and lead a team in a multidisciplinary environment.
• MS Office products including Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word.

Certara bases all employment-related decisions on merit, taking into consideration qualifications, skills, achievement, and performance. We treat all applicants and employees without regard to personal characteristics such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, nationality, marital status, pregnancy, physical or mental condition, genetic information, military service, or other characteristics protected by law.