Job Summary: The Associate Director, Site Budgets provides leadership in the development, management and oversight of the trial site budgets team. The Associate Director also serves as the high-level operational contact with leadership and is responsible for coordinating the standardization and best practices for CTI site budget development processes. Focus is on organizational development to enhance cross-functional collaboration and to foster highly effective site budget execution for clinical trials.
What You'll Do:- Champion operational excellence, providing clear direction, prioritization, coaching, performance management and ongoing optimization to ensure consistent and high-quality on-time delivery.
- Ensure team deliverables meet established timelines, quality standards and business requirements across studies and projects.
- Proactively identify risks, capacity constraints, bottlenecks and upcoming milestones and implementing corrective actions as needed.
- Ensuring budgets are appropriately structured, aligned with study, sponsor and regulatory requirements as well as organizational standards.
- Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, automate and optimize workflows in collaboration with Site Activation and cross-functional teams to improve cycle times, quality, scalability and stakeholder experience.
- Establish and maintain standardized budget processes, tools, templates and operating procedures for site budget management, ensuring consistent execution across studies, regions and teams.
- Monitor and analyze operational data and trends to identify opportunities for improved performance, anticipate challenges and provide actionable insights to senior leaders.
- Lead resolution and escalation of complex or high-risk budget issues ensuring timely decision-making and appropriate escalation when study timelines, sponsor relationships, financial objectives or study delivery may be impacted.
- Drive adoption of organizational change, new processes, systems and ways of working while ensuring team remains aligned with evolving business needs, industry practices and organizational objectives.
- Site Activation team to share lessons learned and ensure continuous, streamlined improvement of the budget processes,
- Plan, implement, facilitate, and evaluate the full execution of assigned clinical trials; may oversee management of multiple clinical trials from the planning phase to the analysis phase for delivery to client
- Serve as primary senior interface on the project with executive management at CTI and the sponsor; provide effective client management to prevent and mitigate trial issues; escalate identified trial, CPM or CTI issues to executive management as needed; actively participate in resolution activities
- Ensure the operational aspects of the functional areas comply with International Council for Harmonization (ICH) guidelines, Good Clinical Practices (GCP), applicable regulatory guidelines and trial procedures
- Oversee the management of budgeted hours by the CPM, who evaluates and manages regional project budget against project milestones; ensure that the CPM takes corrective measures where necessary to keep project in line with budget and scope expectations
- Ensure that the CPM assesses scope of work against client contractual agreements and assist in changes of scope orders; provide review of changes in scope notifications and work with Business Development Operations to ensure completion of needed contract amendments
- Provide supervision, guidance and mentoring to CPMs and provide regular performance evaluation and feedback to direct reports
- Oversee and support the recruitment, resourcing, and management of site budget/payment specialists
- Establish training programs to foster the development, effectiveness and advancement of site budget and payment services staff
- Provide supervision, guidance and mentoring to site budget and payment specialists and provide regular performance evaluation and feedback to direct reports
- Provide high-level review and oversight of site budget development for Requests for Proposals (RFP)
What You'll Bring:- At least 10 years of clinical research experience and/or experience in CTI clinical project management demonstrating a clear and thorough understanding of global trial management processes and the operation of all clinical trial functional areas.
- Bachelor's Degree or equivalent in allied health fields such as nursing, pharmacy or health science
- Experience in management of clinical trials
- Thorough and current understanding of at least one therapeutic area for which CTI is contracted for clinical projects
