Associate Director, Technical Program Manager

Sumitomo Pharma America Inc. (SMPA) is focused on delivering therapeutic and scientific breakthroughs in areas of critical patient need spanning psychiatry & neurology, oncology, urology, women’s health, rare disease, and cell & gene therapies. The company’s diverse portfolio includes several marketed products and a robust pipeline of early- to late-stage assets. Building on Sumitomo Pharma’s 125-year legacy of innovation, SMPA leverages proprietary in-house technology platforms and advanced analytics capabilities to accelerate discovery, development, and help bring novel therapies to patients sooner. SMPA is a Sumitomo Pharma company. [For more information, visit Sumitomo-pharma.com]

Job Overview

We are currently seeking a dynamic, highly motivated, and experienced individual for the position of Associate Director, Technical Program Manager that will oversee the execution of complex technical projects within an organization, ensuring they are completed on time, within budget, and aligned with business goals by managing cross-functional teams, mitigating technical risks, and driving the development and implementation process across the entire project lifecycle, often leveraging their strong technical background to bridge the gap between engineering teams and business stakeholders.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

• Team and Organization
  • Program Team Leadership
    • Program-managing all projects / workstreams within the Data Platforms department
    • Directing cross-functional multi-stream distributed engineering teams
    • Identifying day-to-day priorities, breaking down requirements and assigning tasks
    • Utilizing mixed Agile/Waterfall approach as required for each workstream
    • Organizing the team by leading recurring internal standups and planning sessions
    • Leveraging Jira to plan, assign, track and report on the implementation progress
  • Internal Collaboration
    • Liaising, Partnering and Collaborating with various internal teams outside Data Platforms to remove project impediments, mitigate risks, assess dependencies and coordinate activities:
      • Business Operations
      • Data Strategy Management
      • Network and Cloud Architecture
      • Information Security and Governance
      • Commercial & Medical Affairs
      • Enterprise Service Delivery
      • Marketing Operations
      • Commercial Insights & Analytics
      • Program Management Office
  • Vendor and 3rd Party Management
    • Primary technical point of contact for all 3rd Party Vendors that collaborate with Data Platforms
    • Organizing and leading discussions with external partners to set goals and priorities, align on scope of work, coordinate and ensure SMPA-external collaboration, assess/mitigate risks and remove impediments
    • Assessing and coordinating UAT / acceptance of vendor deliverables by SMPA
    • Coordinating vendor onboarding to SMPA as needed and establishing shared documentation repositories
    • External Parties in scope: Beghou, Precision, Centris, Ogilvy, XPonentL, Veeva, Iqvia, Slipstream, Medispend, MMIT, Pfizer, CMI, Indegene, Knipper, Symphony and others
  • Infrastructure / Development Operations coordination
    • Close Interaction and partnership with Network and Cloud Architecture Team on all Infrastructure / DevOps activities and dependencies
    • Weekly meetings for cross-team alignment and knowledge sharing to promote support for core AWS services, release, timeline, resource and cost management for the commercial operations platform
• Technical Program and Delivery Management
  • Scope Management
    • Hosting and moderating requirements elicitation sessions with business partners
    • Analyzing and elaborating business requirements and translating them into engineering assignments
    • Managing and prioritizing engineering work queue (Jira backlog)
    • Coaching / mentoring external BA resources – as needed
    • Management of new requirements: Sales Team changes new stakeholder / department data marts, consolidations platform enhancements, etc.
  • Timeline and Capacity Management
    • Decomposing business tasks into comprehensive feature development work breakdown structures, multi-stream program plans and timelines
    • Identifying resource capacity based on work demand, holiday, PTO schedules and complexity of work
    • Overseeing technical estimation and delivering detailed projected timelines to the leadership team
    • Elaborating and documenting planned resource needs and program roadmaps for future development and ensuring alignment with key stakeholders
    • Leveraging Jira, Smartsheets and Microsoft Suite to monitor implementation progress, track milestones and ensure timely delivery from inception to rollout
  • Risk Assessment and Mitigation
    • Eliciting and identifying project risks via close collaboration with engineering, internal groups, leadership and 3rd parties
    • Quantifying risk significance by assessing impact and probability
    • Communicating all risks and issues to the leadership team and providing timely updates on changes
    • Calibrating risk grade based on risk dependencies and changed business requirements
    • Establishing comprehensive mitigation plans for each risk/issue to decrease overall impact on the program
  • Technical Operational Support
    • Primary point of contact for all production data platforms support
    • Ensuring production SLAs / standards are being followed by engineering teams
    • Assessing production issues and managing operational backlog
    • Assigning incidents to engineering and tracking resolution progress
    • Analyzing, documenting and reporting impact and resolution to stakeholders and impacted parties
    • Conducting retrospectives and logging backlog tickets to implement prevention measures
  • Stakeholder Management and Reporting
    • Representing the program team and reporting project progress and status to stakeholders at all levels
      • Daily status report to the Head of Data Platforms
      • Weekly status report to program core stakeholders
      • Bi-weekly status report to the PMO
      • Monthly status update to Business IT Strategy and Application Management
    • Managing stakeholder expectations and providing timely updates to leadership in case of deviations
  • Change Management and Deliverable Acceptance
    • Managing all aspects of new code releases, communicating timeline, changes and expectations to stakeholders
    • Planning and orchestrating production code deployments by engineering and platform teams
    • Assessing changes to business requirements, documenting and reporting impact on scope, timeline, risks and/or costs
    • Planning and coordinating user acceptance testing by program stakeholders
    • Managing deliverable acceptance and sign-off by product owners
    • Conducting extensive planning and cross-team coordination for Go Live events and new system launches
  • Support of Key Business Operations Processes
    • Planning and technical management of key quarterly business processes (Alignment, Targeting, IC) in close collaboration with business operations, data strategy management and external parties

Key Core Competencies

• Technical Expertise: Understanding of data architecture, ETL processes, and data modeling.
• Project Management: Proficiency in project management methodologies (i.e. Agile, Scrum, Waterfall) and tools like Jira, Confluence, etc.
• Data Analysis: Ability to analyze and interpret data, knowledgeable, not necessarily proficient, in SQL
• Communication Skills: Strong verbal and written communication skills for stakeholder engagement and team collaboration.
• Problem-Solving: Excellent troubleshooting and critical-thinking abilities to tackle technical challenges.
• Leadership: Capability to lead cross-functional teams, motivate members, and drive project success.
• Time Management: Strong organizational skill to manage multiple projects and deadlines effectively.
• Business Acumen: Understanding of business processes and how data drives decision making.
• Adaptability: Flexibility to adjust to changing project requirements and priorities.
• Attention to Detail: Meticulous approach to ensure data integrity and compliance throughout implementation.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering or related field is required.
• Minimum 10 – 15 years (w/o Masters) or 8 – 12 years (with Master’s) of relevant experience in biotech or pharmaceutical industry or other data warehousing supporting industry.
• Master’s degree, MBA or science is optional but a plus
• Active certification PMI PMP Certification is optional but a plus.
• Certified Scrum Master credentials are a plus.

The base salary range for this role is $146,900 to $183,600. Base salary is part of our total rewards package which also includes the opportunity for merit-based salary increases, short incentive plan participation, eligibility for our 401(k) plan, medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurances and leaves provided in line with your work state.  Our robust time-off policy includes flexible paid time off, 11 paid holidays plus additional time off for a shut-down period during the last week of December, 80 hours of paid sick time upon hire and each year thereafter.  Total compensation, including base salary to be offered, will depend on elements unique to each candidate, including candidate experience, skills, education and other factors permitted by law.

Disclaimer: The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required of personnel so classified. All personnel may be required to perform duties outside of their normal responsibilities from time to time, as needed.

Confidential Data: All information (written, verbal, electronic, etc.) that an employee encounters is considered confidential.

Compliance: Achieve and maintain Compliance with all applicable regulatory, legal and operational rules and procedures, by ensuring that all plans and activities for and on behalf of Sumitomo Pharma America (SMPA) and affiliates are carried out with the "best" industry practices and the highest ethical standards.

Mental/Physical Requirements: Fast paced environment handling multiple demands. Must be able to exercise appropriate judgment as necessary. Requires a high level of initiative and independence. Excellent written and oral communication skills required. Requires ability to use a personal computer for extended periods of time.

Sumitomo Pharma America (SMPA) is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race; color; creed; religion; national origin; age; ancestry; nationality; marital, domestic partnership or civil union status; sex, gender; affectional or sexual orientation; disability; veteran or military status or liability for military status; domestic violence victim status; atypical cellular or blood trait; genetic information (including the refusal to submit to genetic testing) or any other characteristic protected by law.