Associate Director, US Business Strategy, RDU
About this opportunity
Associate Director, US Business Strategy, RDU
Location: Boston Seaport, MA
Introduction to role:
Are you ready to turn complex market signals into decisive actions that accelerate launches for patients with rare diseases? Do you thrive at the intersection of strategy, execution, and influence, bringing clarity, pace, and measurable impact across a dynamic portfolio?
As Associate Director, US Business Strategy, you will shape how we plan, prioritize, and launch multiple products and indications in an increasingly complex US marketplace. Reporting to the Head of Business Strategy & Governance, US Commercial, you will drive the build-out of new capabilities, scalable processes, and governance that enable faster, better decisions. Your work will directly connect strategic ambition to operational excellence, so our teams can deliver meaningful outcomes for under-served patients and sustainable growth for the business.
Accountabilities:
Strategic Planning Leadership: Lead key elements of annual planning cycles, including brand strategy, one-year and three-year plans, translating insights into clear choices and resource allocations that advance our portfolio.
Cross-Functional Execution: Coordinate and track strategic initiatives end-to-end, ensuring disciplined implementation, risk management, and course-correction to deliver results on time and at quality.
Executive Communication: Craft concise, data-driven updates and recommendations for senior forums; represent the team with the right balance of detail and decision-oriented clarity.
Influence and Alignment: Build senior-level relationships across functions to align priorities, remove obstacles, and hardwire accountability for outcomes.
Operating Model and Capability Build: Diagnose opportunities to improve effectiveness and efficiency across critical processes; partner with leaders to define and develop the capabilities required to deliver the long-term plan.
Launch Program Leadership: Serve as US launch project manager for multiple products/indications; create and coordinate integrated launch plans; partner across US and global teams to align on strategy; codify and apply lessons learned and best practices to raise the bar on launch excellence.
Performance and Readiness Analytics: Create consolidated dashboards, KPIs, and portfolio-level reports on launch planning; provide actionable insights and recommendations to achieve launch readiness at key milestones.
Launch Tool Ownership and Training: Act as system administrator for the launch planning tool (Smartsheet), manage ad hoc support, and deliver onboarding and training to accelerate adoption.
Competitive Readiness: Support and, when required, lead competitive readiness projects; drive adoption of best practices across the US organization; facilitate key workstreams and workshops that prepare teams to win.
Portfolio Prioritization and Representation: Prioritize ongoing and planned activities across a dynamic pipeline; represent Business Strategy & Governance in senior meetings to enable fast, informed decisions.
Team Building: Play a key role in building out the US Business Strategy & Governance team, establishing ways of working and standards that scale with our growth.
Essential Skills/Experience
Bachelor’s degree required in a relevant field
5+ years of commercial experience in the healthcare industry that may include Marketing, Project Management, Business Analytics, Business Development, Corporate Strategy and/or Financial Analysis, Consulting
Demonstrated strong project management & communication skills
Proficiency in Microsoft Office particularly in Excel and PPT
The duties of this role are generally conducted in an office environment. As is typical of an office-based role, employees must be able, with or without an accommodation to: use a computer; engage in communications via phone, video, and electronic messaging; engage in problem solving and non-linear thought, analysis, and dialogue; collaborate with others; maintain general availability during standard business hours.
Desirable Skills/Experience
Advanced degree (Ph.D. or MBA or Masters)
Business background or advanced quantitative discipline degree preferred
3+ years of healthcare consulting experience with a top-tier firm focused on strategy, operations and transformation topics for pharmaceutical companies
Prior experience in rare diseases
Experience with launching products
Proficiency with Smartsheet
The annual base pay for this position ranges from $151,081.60 to $226,622.40. Our positions offer eligibility for various incentives, an opportunity to receive short-term incentive bonuses, equity-based awards for salaried roles and commissions for sales roles. Benefits offered include qualified retirement programs, paid time off (i.e., vacation, holiday, and leaves), as well as health, dental, and vision coverage in accordance with the terms of the applicable plans.
When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working gives us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That's why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn't mean we're not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility.
Why Alexion/AstraZeneca
Here you will shape strategy that moves medicines to patients who have few options, while growing in an environment that blends the autonomy and pace of a biotech with the scale and stability of a global biopharma. We bring diverse thinkers together, commercial leaders, scientists, analysts, and technologists, to solve hard problems side by side, with kindness alongside ambition. You will have access to cutting-edge tools and courageous colleagues who challenge convention, all while staying close to the real-world experiences of people living with rare and devastating diseases. Your impact will be visible, your voice heard, and your growth supported as you turn bold ideas into measurable outcomes.
If you are ready to lead US strategy and launch excellence for a Rare Disease Unit that changes what’s possible for patients, step forward and make your impact count today!
Date Posted
06-Aug-2026
Closing Date
20-Aug-2026 Our mission is to build an inclusive environment where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and employees. In furtherance of that mission, we welcome and consider applications from all qualified candidates, regardless of their protected characteristics. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please complete the corresponding section in the application form.
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Marketing role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 288 comparable Associate Director Marketing roles across 60 biopharma companies.
Salary context
67 of 288 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 288 comparable roles
+ 35 more countries
Seniority mix
288 of 288 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
74 of 288 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.