Associate Director, Product Management

Band Level 5 Job Description Summary #LI-Hybrid This position will be located at East Hanover, NJ site and will not have the ability to be located remotely. This position will require 10% travel as defined by the business (domestic and/ or international). Job description summary Novartis is on a mission to transform medicine and improve lives worldwide. As a global leader in healthcare, we leverage advanced technology and data to deliver patient-centric solutions, enhance customer engagement, and drive innovation. We collaborate closely with the US business, bringing insights and challenging ideas to empower smarter, data-driven decision-making. The US CRM organization sits within Strategy, Platforms & Transformation (SPT) – AI & Platform Products and plays a crucial role in driving the transformation to a next-generation Customer360 operating model. Novartis seeks an accomplished product leader with a track record of turning business demand from multiple commercial functions into a well-managed data product backlog. Strong prioritization judgment, stakeholder partnership, and hands-on data fluency are essential to success in this role. Partnering closely with the Director, PO Audience Activation & Marketing Intelligence, the Associate Director, Audience Activation Product Manager supports the strategy, development, and delivery of priority capabilities, particularly from a data activation & enablement perspective, across the US CRM ecosystem. Novartis is transforming its CRM ecosystem, and this role will play a key role in enabling this. The role partners with business, peer SPT and technology teams to translate customer and field needs into clear requirements, manage a prioritized backlog, and drive execution through agile delivery. The Associate Director helps improve how Novartis engages customers by prioritizing process improvements through scalable technology enhancements, analytics, and user experience updates - while ensuring solutions meet governance, privacy, and compliance expectations. Job Description Key Responsibilities: Own and deliver a defined product area: Lead end-to-end delivery of assigned data-centric capabilities, such as platform & data integrations, data ingestion, transformation, and unified customer profile management, and enabling CRM capabilities & workflows, from discovery through release, hypercare, enhancements, and ongoing maintenance. Drive prioritization: Continuously prioritize and de-prioritize backlog items with the Director based on platform capacity, strategic alignment, and cross-functional trade-offs, and communicate decisions to stakeholders. Lead and manage the scrum team: lead a dedicated scrum team through sprint ceremonies, backlog grooming, and capacity planning; remove blockers, manage dependencies, and protect team velocity and morale. Partner across business and IT: Coordinate with CRM product managers, architecture, analytics, privacy/legal, and commercial/medical stakeholders to align on requirements, sequencing, and release readiness. Represent data activation platform in CRM planning: represent CRM function needs in platform-level planning, architecture discussions; partner with the Director and other function product managers to ensure coherent, platform-wide decision-making. Support data modeling: Analyze existing customer and operational data sources to support unification, identity resolution, and schema design decisions for new use cases. Partner with Data Foundations: Work with data engineers and architects to define and validate data models, ingestion flows, and harmonization logic; support the creation of user stories and functional requirements for technical teams. Enable activation: Work with the scrum team and data analysts to design and validate segments, calculated insights, and data activation strategies in alignment with business needs. Experience: Novartis seeks an accomplished product management leader with a track record managing data platform capabilities within commercial operations and demonstrated success transforming CRM capabilities within commercial operations. Strong prioritization judgment, stakeholder partnership, and hands-on data fluency are essential to success in this role. Essential Requirements: Education: Bachelor's degree in a related field is required; Master of Science and/or MBA preferred Minimum 5+ years of product management experience, with a strong track record in data platforms, enterprise SaaS, or platform/enablement product roles. Hands-on knowledge, preferably Salesforce Data 360 (Data Cloud), including its implementation , capabilities, data model, architecture, and how it supports data activation across business functions; this is a core requirement for the role. Deep understanding of the CRM landscape (Sales, Marketing and Service) and how field use cases drive data activation requirements . CRM familiarity preferred across Salesforce (Agentforce, Marketing Cloud, Health Cloud, Data360, Core platform), Veeva, and the major and evolving players in the ecosystem. Understanding of Data platforms, CRM, and AI and architectures (e.g., Salesforce, Salesforce Data Cloud, Veeva, OpenAI, Snowflake, or similar data lake technologies). Demonstrated experience managing a scrum team end-to-end: from roadmap definition through sprint execution and delivery. Excellent cross-functional stakeholder management and experience working across multiple product organizations, aligning priorities, and building trust without direct authority. Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to translate complex platform concepts for business audiences and business requirements for technical teams. Highly Preferred: Familiarity with cross-product integration patterns, including APIs, data pipelines, and activation workflows. Background in pharma, life sciences, or a similarly regulated, data-intensive industry. Experience working in a matrixed organization where multiple product functions share a common platform infrastructure. Agile/Scrum certification or equivalent formal training. Novartis Compensation Summary: The salary for this position is expected to range between $145,600.00 and $270,400.00 per year. The final salary offered is determined based on factors like, but not limited to, relevant skills and experience, and upon joining Novartis will be reviewed periodically. Novartis may change the published salary range based on company and market factors. Your compensation will include a performance-based cash incentive and, depending on the level of the role, eligibility to be considered for annual equity awards. US-based eligible employees will receive a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, life and disability benefits, a 401(k) with company contribution and match, and a variety of other benefits. In addition, employees are eligible for a generous time off package including vacation, personal days, holidays and other leaves. EEO Statement: The Novartis Group of Companies are Equal Opportunity Employers. We do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status. We strive to create an inclusive workplace that cultivates bold innovation through collaboration and empowers our people to unleash their full potential. Accessibility and reasonable accommodations The Novartis Group of Companies are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or in order to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an e-mail to call +1 (877)395-2339 and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Please include the job requisition number in your message. Salary Range $145,600.00 - $270,400.00 Skills Desired Cross-Functional Collaboration, Customer Engagement, Customer Insights, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing, Market Research, Media Campaigns, Product Marketing, Stakeholder Engagement, Stakeholder Management, Team Leadership, Waterfall Model