Associate Director, CRM Product Owner

Novartis; East Hanover (NJ); Hybrid; USD 177,710,000 - 243,835,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision

401k

Job summary

Novartis seeks a seasoned Associate Director, CRM Product Owner in East Hanover, NJ, to lead CRM capabilities within the US CRM ecosystem. You will translate field needs into clear requirements, manage a prioritized backlog, and drive end-to-end agile delivery with governance and compliance at the forefront.

The role partners with business and IT teams to enhance customer engagement, improve processes, and deliver measurable outcomes while ensuring governance and privacy standards are met.

Qualifications

• Experience leading CRM product management initiatives.
• Ability to translate business needs into clear requirements and user stories.
• Familiarity with governance, privacy, and compliance processes.

Responsibilities

• Own and deliver defined CRM capabilities from discovery through release and hypercare.
• Translate business needs into requirements; define user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Maintain a healthy backlog aligned to planning cycles and stakeholder priorities.
• Drive agile execution with delivery teams and remove blockers.
• Collaborate with CRM product managers, architecture, analytics, privacy/legal, and commercial/medical stakeholders.
• Ensure governance, privacy, and compliance in deliverables.

Skills

CRM Product Ownership

Agile delivery

Backlog management

Stakeholder collaboration

Data governance

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree preferred

Tools

Salesforce

Veeva

Job description

Novartis touches the lives of a tenth of the world’s population. Every role here, regardless of contract type, makes an impact on human life!

Novartis US partners with external managed service provider Magnit Global to offer engaging temporary contractor opportunities like this, to those who are looking for flexibility in their career while looking to gain new skills and experiences providing services to an inclusive global medicines company.

Ready to work with/through Magnit at Novartis? Please read on...

Associate Director, CRM Product Owner

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. The Insights and Decision Science (IDS) team is dedicated to enabling improved decision making at Novartis by leveraging superior data to identify actionable insights that drive enhanced performance. 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 IDS and plays a crucial role in driving the transformation to a next‑generation Customer360 operating model.

Reporting to CRM Product Management leadership, the Associate Director, CRM Product Owner supports the strategy, development, and delivery of priority CRM capabilities across the US CRM ecosystem. This role partners with business 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 enabling process improvements, technology enhancements, analytics, and user experience updates—while ensuring solutions meet governance, privacy, and compliance expectations.

Major Accountabilities

• Own and deliver a defined product area: Drive end‑to‑end delivery for a set of CRM capabilities (e.g., field productivity, customer engage‑ment workflows, medical engagement) from discovery through release and hypercare.
• Translate business needs into requirements: Partner with stake‑holders to gather, document, and prioritize requirements; define user stories, acceptance criteria, and success measures.
• Manage and refine the backlog: Maintain a healthy backlog (prioritization, refinement cadence, dependencies, definition of ready/done) aligned to quarterly/PI planning and stakeholder priorities.
• Drive disciplined agile execution: Work with delivery teams to plan, execute, and track work; remove blockers; manage scope trade‑offs; and ensure predictable, high‑quality releases.
• Improve processes and user experience: Identify pain points in cur‑rent workflows and propose enhancements; validate solutions with users; and support change adoption with clear documentation and enablement.
• Partner across business and IT: Coordinate with CRM product man‑agers, architecture, analytics, privacy/legal, and commercial/medical stakeholders to align on requirements, sequencing, and release readiness.
• Ensure governance, privacy, and compliance: Follow established governance processes and support risk assessments to ensure solutions meet regulatory, privacy, security, and data standards.
• Mentor and coordinate delivery resources: Provide day‑to‑day direction to extended team members (e.g., analysts, contractors) and con‑tribute to capability building across the product owner community.
• Support change enablement and adoption: Partner with training and communications leads to ensure releases are understood, adopted, and measured; incorporate feedback into iterative improvements.
• Communicate status and outcomes: Provide concise updates on roadmap items, risks, decisions needed, and measurable outcomes to product management leadership and stakeholders.
• Contribute to product strategy and continuous improvement: Bring market/industry insights, user feedback, and performance data to inform roadmap recommendations and operational improvements.
• Maintain platform and domain awareness: Stay current on CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Veeva) and evolving best practices; apply learnings pragmatically within the Novartis ecosystem.

Key Performance Indicators

• Value delivered: Demonstrate measurable outcomes for the owned capability area (e.g., time saved, improved data quality, increased engagement) aligned to agreed KPIs.
• Release predictability and quality: Deliver on committed release timelines and scope with strong quality (defect rates, post‑release stability, and support volume).
• Backlog health: Maintain an actionable, prioritized backlog with clear user stories and acceptance criteria; manage dependencies and technical debt transparently.
• Adoption and user satisfaction: Improve adoption and satisfaction for released features (training completion, usage analytics, stakeholder feedback/CSAT).
• Process improvement outcomes: Deliver documented workflow improvements with measurable benefit; ensure changes are sustained through standard operating practices.
• Stakeholder alignment: Achieve timely decisions and alignment across key partners; minimize rework through strong discovery and clear documentation.
• Governance and compliance: Ensure deliverables follow established governance, privacy, and compliance processes with audit‑ready documentation.
• Team effectiveness: Receive strong feedback from delivery teams and stakeholders on clarity, collaboration, and execution; contribute to a positive, high‑performing team culture.
• Communication and enablement: Provide clear release notes, training/support materials, and stakeholder updates that improve readiness and adoption.
• Cost awareness: Support cost‑conscious delivery by identifying reuse opportunities, avoiding unnecessary customization, and escalating risks/impacts early.
• Operational rigor: Maintain accurate documentation, decision logs, and delivery reporting to support transparency and operational excellence.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in related field is required;
• Master of Science and/or MBA preferred

Experience

Novartis seeks an accomplished product management leader with experience and demonstrated success transforming CRM capabilities within commercial operations. Strong innovation, partnership, and intellectual maturity are needed. A comprehensive understanding of best practices in CRM Data and AI applications is key to success in this role.

Additional qualifications are as follows:

• Proven success in driving product management capabilities for large-scale CRM implementations.
• 5-7+ years of experience in product management, technology strategy, innovation, or leadership roles, preferably in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, or CRM sectors
• Deep understanding of the CRM landscape (Sales, Marketing and Service), including Salesforce (Agentforce, Marketing Cloud, Health Cloud, Data360, Core plat‑form), Veeva, and the major and evolving players in the ecosystem.
• Understanding of CRM, AI, and Data platforms and architectures (e.g., Salesforce, Salesforce Data Cloud, Veeva, OpenAI, Snowflake, or similar data lake technologies).
• Experience being accountable for the operations of product management including backlog health and prioritization, agile practices and ceremonies, and driving strategic innovation
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to build stakeholder buy‑in and alignment
• Experience in AI-supported product management techniques including LLM sup‑ported user‑story creation and process mapping
• Must possess an ability to foster cross‑functional alignment of key stakeholders to create a disciplined, ambitious, and collaborative, global, commercial CRM strategy
• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex data and make informed decisions
• Ability to adapt strategies and approaches in a rapidly evolving technological landscape

Navigate complexity

• Enable impactful and fast decision‑making.
• Identify key issues in complex situations, keeping focused on the big picture and adapting and prioritizing during change.
• Demonstrate long term vision by taking a broader view, thinking through indirect consequences and longer‑term implications.

Deliver collective impact

• Engage with others and integrate diverse perspectives from colleagues to achieve the best outcome for the enterprise.
• Demonstrate influence without authority, work and collaborate across boundaries.
• Challenge assumptions, make decisions grounded in data.
• Build situational awareness, adapt leadership style to enhance impact of others and performance of team

Location

East Hanover, NJ Hybrid (3 days (Mon‑Thurs), 2 remote)

Pay Rate

$62/hour - $85/hour W-2 Only (based on Education/Experience)

Contract

12-month

Health, dental, vision, 401k

(provided minimum eligibility hours are met)

Why Novartis

Helping people with disease and their families takes more than innovative science. It takes a community of smart, passionate people like you. Collaborating, supporting and inspiring each other. Combining to achieve breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Ready to create a brighter future together?

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, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Accommodation

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing this application, interviewing, completing any pre‑employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to Magnit at [e-mail].