At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead a team to develop impactful marketing strategies for life-changing medicines.
- Company: Join Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a global biopharma innovator transforming patient lives.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, bonuses, flexible vacation, and comprehensive health benefits.
- Other info: Dynamic work environment with opportunities for growth and collaboration.
- Why this job: Make a real difference in healthcare while leading innovative marketing initiatives.
- Qualifications: 15+ years in marketing with leadership experience in pharma or healthcare.
The predicted salary is between 72000 - 88000 £ per year.
Jazz Pharmaceuticals is a global biopharma company whose purpose is to innovate to transform the lives of patients and their families. We are dedicated to developing life-changing medicines for people with serious diseases — often with limited or no therapeutic options. We have a diverse portfolio of marketed medicines, including leading therapies for sleep disorders and epilepsy, and a growing portfolio of cancer treatments. Our patient-focused and science-driven approach powers pioneering research and development advancements across our robust pipeline of innovative therapeutics in oncology and neuroscience.
At Jazz, we are reimagining how we design and deliver more precise customer experiences, enabled by new technologies, modern ways of working, and high performing team behaviours. Through this work, we enable teams to better understand patients, caregivers, and HCPs, anticipate their needs across the enterprise, deliver timely and personalized engagement, and orchestrate seamless, end-to-end experiences as One Jazz.
The Senior Director, Activation Lead helps translate franchise and functional priorities into clear plans and roadmaps for new global capabilities that will be developed and used across Jazz. Reporting to the SVP, Chief Customer Experience Officer, this role aligns cross-functional stakeholders on what matters most, what comes first, and how success will be defined for new capabilities. This role will also oversee Marketing Enablement to define and scale consistent marketing standards (e.g., brand planning, customer journeys), develop practical tools and playbooks to enable effective execution, and ensure voice of marketing is represented in leadership and cross-functional team forums and that best practices and learnings are continuously captured and scaled across teams.
Essential Functions/Responsibilities
- Leadership & Strategy
- Enable enterprise impact as the pivotal role that translates priorities into execution-ready plans, aligns stakeholders on trade-offs and sequencing, and ensures global capabilities deliver clear, measurable outcomes.
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of four Activation Leads and the Global Marketing Enablement Lead, setting clear priorities, decision rights, and performance expectations.
- Build activation and marketing enablement leadership across the team, including skills in stakeholder management, change leadership, and value realization.
- Define and own the Activation strategy for global CX capabilities, ensuring consistent, scalable adoption across franchises and functions where appropriate.
- Provide oversight around global marketing enablement efforts to define and codify marketing standards (e.g., brand planning, customer journeys, marketing skillsets), develop practical tools to enable execution, and support ongoing upskilling by partnering with Learning and Development for structured learning programs.
- Ensure franchise and functional input is consistently synthesized and fed back into CX Operations and Global Capability Teams to inform roadmap evolution and delivery decisions.
- Set clear expectations, standards, and guardrails for how global capabilities are introduced, embedded, and sustained in franchise ways of working.
- Ensure activation and marketing enablement plans balance enterprise consistency with franchise‑specific needs, readiness, and change capacity.
- Represent activation and marketing priorities, risks, and dependencies in cross-functional and leadership forums to drive alignment and informed decision‑making.
- Establish and monitor adoption, utilization, and impact metrics, ensuring insights are used to refine activation and marketing enablement approaches and drive continuous improvement.
- Collaboration
- Partner with CX leadership team to ensure activation and marketing enablement priorities are integrated within broader functional strategies and initiatives.
- Partner closely with CX Leads, Global Capability Teams, and Technical Leads to ensure activation considerations are incorporated early in discovery, design, and delivery planning.
- Partner with Franchise Heads to align activation strategy to franchise priorities, ensuring global CX capabilities are effectively adopted and embedded into day‑to‑day ways of working.
- Collaborate with training, communications, and field enablement teams to align activation efforts with broader enablement and change initiatives.
- Lead and oversee marketing enablement efforts, ensuring alignment between activation strategy and global marketing standards, playbooks, and capability development efforts.
- Act as a senior point of escalation for complex adoption, change, or readiness challenges impacting enterprise capability rollouts.
- Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Broad understanding of CRM, omnichannel engagement, digital enablement platforms, analytics and insights, sufficient to guide teams on effective activation approaches without owning detailed solution design.
- Proven ability to oversee teams translating user needs into activation strategies, ensuring consistency, scalability, and alignment with enterprise standards.
- Experience setting activation frameworks, standards, and success criteria that guide how capabilities are rolled out, embedded, and sustained across organization.
- Strong ability to interpret adoption, utilization, and impact data and use insights to steer activation priorities and course‑correct at a portfolio level.
- Experience designing and operationalizing global marketing frameworks and assets to drive consistent execution across brands, markets and customer segments.
- Proven ability to drive adoption of marketing practices at scale through structured governance, communities of practice, and feedback loops to continuously refine approaches.
- Experience guiding teams through multi-function rollouts, including sequencing launches, managing change load, and balancing readiness across franchises and functions.
- Solid working knowledge of capability operating models and agile delivery, with the ability to partner effectively with capability, CX, and technical leaders on activation timing and implications.
- Experience leading and developing a high-performing team, including resource planning, performance management, and talent development to support evolving business needs.
- Business Skills
- Customer Journey Understanding – ability to see customer’s end-to-end experience clearly and use it on an ongoing basis for go to market strategic, tactical and measurement decisions, while anticipating needs across touchpoints.
- Cross functional Matrix Collaboration – ability to work fluidly across teams and reporting lines respecting SME, coordinating shared work, ensuring progress even when accountability is distributed – supporting decisions with professional alignment and focus on collective success.
- Delivering through Others- ability to achieve outcomes by empowering people, coordinating shared effort, and guiding progress without completing every task yourself.
- Systems Thinking - The ability to understand how actions create upstream and downstream effects across the organization, seeing patterns and interdependencies to improve the whole ecosystem, not just individual parts.
- Continuous Improvement — ability to regularly improve processes/capabilities through reflection and iteration, generates new options and approaches when constraints exist, growth mindset, challenges status quo.
- Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in business, healthcare, technology, or related field.
- 15+ years of experience in marketing, omnichannel or activation within a pharmaceutical organization.
- 6-8 years of experience leading people, including managing and developing high-performing teams and driving accountability across functions.
- Demonstrated experience leading teams that include Directors or equivalent roles, with accountability for team performance, development, and outcomes.
- Strong track record of partnering with commercial, market access, medical and other cross-functional stakeholders and leadership to translate strategy into actionable marketing enablement assets.
- Proven ability to establish and institutionalize marketing standards and frameworks within complex, matrixed organizations.
- Experience operating as part of a leadership team, with demonstrated ability to influence global strategy, drive cross-functional alignment, and contribute to broader organizational leadership.
- Preferred / Additional Qualifications:
- Advanced degree (MBA or relevant graduate degree) preferred.
- Experience in pharmaceutical or healthcare industries preferred.
- Experience working in rare disease or specialty brands, with strong understanding of unique stakeholder dynamics.
- Working Requirements:
- 20-30% travel will be required.
Jazz Pharmaceuticals is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any characteristic protected by law.
Senior Director, Activation Lead in London employer: Jazz Pharmaceuticals
Jazz Pharmaceuticals is an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic work environment in Dublin, Ireland, where innovation meets patient care. With a strong commitment to employee development and a collaborative culture, we empower our team members to contribute to life-changing medicines while enjoying comprehensive benefits and growth opportunities. Join us to be part of a mission-driven organisation that values diversity and fosters a supportive atmosphere for professional advancement.