Summit Therapeutics plc

Associate Director, Project Management - Medical Affairs (Princeton, NJ or Palo Alto, CA)

Summit Therapeutics plc$175K — $200K *
Pharmaceuticals & Biotech
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree or PMP certification preferred.
  • 5+ years in project management within biopharma or life sciences.
  • 5+ years supporting medical affairs project management.
  • Experience in pre-commercial or early commercial biotech/pharma preferred.
  • Ability to translate complex data into executive-ready insights.
  • Expertise in project management methodologies (PMP, Lean, Six Sigma, Agile).
  • Strong analytical mindset and proven ability to lead change.

Responsibilities

  • Lead cross-functional medical planning for launch readiness.
  • Define and oversee medical workstreams for product launches and lifecycle management.
  • Establish dashboards and KPIs for monitoring project progress.
  • Facilitate strategic reviews and cross-functional planning meetings.
  • Drive the evolution of Medical Affairs operations and process optimization.
  • Lead operational planning for major scientific congresses and stakeholder engagements.
  • Manage vendor relationships to ensure quality and timely delivery.

Benefits

  • Opportunity for significant professional growth in a critical leadership role.
  • Collaborative and dynamic working environment with cross-functional exposure.
  • Potential for travel, enhancing global industry engagement.
  • Engagement with high-impact medical affairs and external stakeholders.
Full Job Description
Overview of Role:

The Associate Director, Medical Affairs Project Management role will be critical in ensuring operational excellence, cross-functional coordination, and launch readiness via project leadership of the Global Medical Affairs functional plans.

Reporting to the VP of Project Management, this position serves as a strategic partner to the Medical team while serving as the primary cross-functional operational contact and liaison for effective alignment, communication flow, and governance. The role will serve as a central point of contact for operational planning, delivery, and governance of critical Medical Affairs projects-spanning scientific communications, congress strategy, advisory boards, medical education, and post-marketing data generation supporting launch preparation.

This role focuses on day-to-day project execution, ensuring defined scope, timelines, budgets, and quality objectives are met across the commercial product lifecycle.

Role and Responsibilities:

Strategic Project Leadership and governance
    • Lead cross-functional medical planning and execution for launch readiness sub-team/s, integrated evidence generation plans, scientific platform development, and field medical enablement.
    • Define and oversee medical workstreams for new product launches, indication expansions, and lifecycle management.
    • Establish and maintain dashboards, KPIs, and governance frameworks to monitor progress, identify risks and develop mitigation solutions, and drive accountability.
    • Facilitate strategic reviews, cross-functional planning meetings, and Medical Affairs business reviews.

Cross-functional Collaboration
    • Partner closely with leaders in Field Medical, Medical Communications, Medical Information, HEOR, and Clinical Operations to ensure unified execution and prioritization.
    • Partner closely with leaders across other launch work-streams for aligned strategy and execution
    • Alignment with other launch project management team members to enhance project management effectiveness through collaboration

Operational Infrastructure & Process Excellence
    • Drive the evolution of Medical Affairs operations through process optimization, SOP development, and adoption of best practices.
    • Champion and as needed develop the implementation of medical planning tools

Congress & External Engagement Readiness
    • Lead project management to support operational planning for major scientific congresses, including alignment across abstracts, symposia, and booth activities.
    • Oversee project management supporting coordination and execution of high-impact stakeholder engagements (ad boards, medical education programs, scientific exchange events etc).

Vendor Management:
    • Manage relationships with key vendors and external partners to ensure high-quality, on-time, and on-budget delivery.

Project management:
    • Contribute to developing robust project management tools, processes for launch and day-to-day operations.
    • Partner with other project managers to develop periodic launch management dashboards, meeting materials and actively manage functional, sub-teams and work-streams meetings for effective launch management

The position responsibilities are not limited to the above and might change as the team's needs evolve and includes all other duties as assigned.

Experience, Education and Specialized Knowledge and Skills:
  • Bachelor's (BS) degree required; advanced degree (MS, MBA, PharmD, PhD) or PMP certification preferred.
  • Minimum of 5+ years of experience in project management, operational excellence, reporting, and performance management within biopharmaceutical or life sciences organizations.
  • Minimum of 5+ years of direct project management experience supporting medical affairs
  • Prior experience in pre-commercial or early commercial biotech/pharma strongly preferred.
  • Proven ability to translate complex data into executive-ready insights.
  • Expertise in project management and process improvement methodologies (PMP, Lean, Six Sigma, Agile).
  • Strong analytical mindset
  • Change leadership in fast-paced, evolving environments
  • Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive accountability without direct authority.
  • Willingness to travel 30-50% of the time.


This is the pay for this position

Pay Transparency

$175,000-$200,000 USD

Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor. The total compensation package for this position may also include bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable variable compensation.

Summit does not accept referrals from employment businesses and/or employment agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site. All employment businesses/agencies are required to contact Summit's Talent Acquisition team at [email protected] to obtain prior written authorization before referring any candidates to Summit.

About Summit Therapeutics plc

Summit Therapeutics is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel medicines to treat rare diseases with high unmet medical need. The company's lead product candidate, Ridinilazole, is a precision antibiotic that has the potential to treat Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) with a superior clinical profile compared to existing CDI treatments. Summit Therapeutics is also developing a pipeline of additional product candidates targeting genetic diseases and other indications.
Learn more about Summit Therapeutics plc
Size
105 employees
Market Cap
$842.6 million
Industry
Founded
2003
5 Year Trend
+9910%
Revenue
$1 million
NASDAQ

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