Director, Analytics & Insights

Norstella; Jackson (MS); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and Prescription Drug Benefits

401k with company match

Paid Parental Leave

Job summary

Norstella is seeking a Director of Analytics & Insights to lead RWD/RWE strategy within the Content Operations team. This role combines hands-on analytics leadership with guiding a small team of RWD specialists, focused on turning observational data into actionable insights for clinical and commercial use.

Based in the US, remote-friendly, you will define data standards, ensure defensible evidence, and drive AI-ready outputs across multiple therapeutic areas, partnering with Product, Data

Qualifications

• 5+ years hands-on experience in RWD study design and statistical ownership.
• Fluency in US real-world data sources and their strengths/limits.
• Strong clinical expertise to translate reasoning into cohort definitions and endpoint logic.
• Ability to translate clinical RWD concepts into precise, buildable specifications.

Responsibilities

• Set the RWD/RWE strategy for how real-world evidence is generated, structured and productised.
• Own cross-functional relationships with Product, Services, Technology and Data Science.
• Define clinically grounded rules and validation for cohorts, endpoints and study design.
• Ensure RWE outputs are defensible and AI-ready for content products and agentive workflows.

Skills

RWD/RWE

Data strategy

Clinical epidemiology

SQL/Python

Stakeholder management

Education

MD or Life Sciences degree

Advanced degree desirable

Tools

SQL

Python

R

SAS

Jira/Confluence

Job description

Director, Analytics & Insights

Company: Norstella

Location: Remote, United States

Date Posted: Aug 17, 2026

Employment Type: Full Time

Job ID: R-2141

Director, Analytics & Insights (Clinical RWD/RWE Solutions)

About us

Norstella is a premier and critical global life sciences data and AI solutions provider dedicated to improving

patient access to life-saving therapies. Norstella supports pharmaceutical and biotech companies across the full

drug development lifecycle — from pipeline to patient. Our mission is simple: to help our clients bring therapies

to market faster and more efficiently, ultimately impacting patient lives.

Norstella unites market-leading brands - Citeline, Evaluate, MMIT, Panalgo, Skipta and The Dedham Group

and delivers must-have answers and insights, leveraging AI, for critical strategic, clinical, and commercial

decision-making. We help our clients:

• Accelerate the drug development cycle
• Assess competition and bring the right drugs to market
• Make data driven commercial and financial decisions
• Match and recruit patients for clinical trials
• Identify and address barriers to therapies

Norstella serves most pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world, along with regulators like the

FDA, and payers. By providing critical proprietary data supporting AI-driven workflows, Norstella helps clients

make decisions faster and with greater confidence. Norstella's investments in AI are transforming how data is

consumed and decisions are made, disrupting inefficient legacy workflows and helping the industry become

more efficient, innovative, and responsive to patient needs.

Job description

This is a player-manager position within the Content Strategy team in Norstella Content Operations, reporting to

the VP, Content Strategy. It combines hands-on strategic ownership with leadership of a small team of technical

RWD specialists (two direct reports) who implement the RWD logic and analytical solutions. The role is UK

based and remote. The Director sets the direction for RWD/RWE transformational programs and projects that

address key business priorities, working in close collaboration with cross-functional business units (Technology,

Product, Data Science, Services), and remains directly hands-on in the strategy, evidence logic and specification

work that underpins them, focusing on:

• Data Optimisation - Drive AI-ready, quality RWE
• Data Utilisation - Maximise data utility and unlock opportunities to leverage Norstella RWD data
• across the business to drive value, including as the foundation for AI solutions and agentic workflows
• Thought Partnership - Spearhead data strategy, acting as the SME bridge between client value and
• Norstella data across both content products and AI-driven solutions
• Defensible RWE - own the logic and standards for how real-world evidence is defined, built and
• defended (cohort definitions, endpoint-based business rules and study design), ensuring outputs are
• clinically sound, withstand scientific and client scrutiny, and are fit to power both content products and
• AI solutions and agents

Responsibilities

Serve as an influential RWD/RWE Content SME and thought partner advising

senior leadership across Norstella

• Set the RWD/RWE strategy - direct how real-world evidence is generated, structured and productised
• across all therapeutic areas, in service of the broader content strategy
• Own cross-functional stakeholder relationships and client engagements across Product, Services,
• Technology and Data Science, acting as an ambassador for the value of RWE data with internal and
• external stakeholders and surfacing opportunities for growth and enhancement
• Represent RWD as a function across Product, Data Science, Content and Technology - resolving trade
• offs and providing clear, clinically grounded paths forward
• Own the translation of complex, data-driven RWE concepts into business-digestible value and ROI for
• clients, aligned with enterprise-wide priorities
• Ensure clear lines of communication with product and AI teams developing RWE roadmap items -
• including AI solutions and agents that consume our data - and ensure on-time delivery of data
• Report to executive leadership team on progress, risks and implications of strategic initiatives
• Own the defensible logic and specification of our real-world evidence
• Define and govern the standards for cohort definitions, primary and secondary endpoint logic, and real
• world study design across therapeutic areas (indication-agnostic)
• Translate clinical and RWD expertise into precise, buildable specifications and business rules that Data
• Science and Technology can implement without ambiguity
• Provide clear, clinically grounded paths forward when the science, data and product priorities are in
• tension - acting as the bridge between clinical reality and what gets built and shipped
• Ensure the defensibility of RWE outputs is maintained as offerings scale, setting the evidence bar that
• protects scientific credibility and commercial value
• Own the evidence logic, interpretation standards and analytic approach that turn extracted data into
• actionable insights and strategic recommendations - setting the direction others build to, grounded in
• prior hands-on data experience rather than routine extraction
• Understand the relationship between clinical reality and its imperfect representation in healthcare data -
• recognising artefacts introduced by coding behaviour, reimbursement processes, site-specific practice
• and incomplete longitudinal capture, and determining where absence of an event in the data can and
• cannot reasonably be interpreted as clinical absence
• Identify when apparently valid analytical outputs are clinically implausible, and challenge logic that is
• technically executable but clinically unsound
• Apply observational and epidemiological judgement to solution design - critically assessing cohort
• construction, index dates, follow-up definitions and endpoint selection, and recognising material
• sources of selection bias, information bias, confounding, censoring, missingness and measurement
• error
• Ensure solutions distinguish appropriately between descriptive observation, association and causal
• interpretation, and partner with specialist epidemiologists or statisticians where advanced
• methodological input is required
• Establish clinically justified assumptions where RWD is incomplete or ambiguous, identify appropriate
• proxy measures, and specify edge cases and exception handling required for robust implementation
• Ownership of end-to-end enhancement of content datasets, leading capability
• expansion
• Spearhead identification of whitespace and structural gaps, and architect feasible, innovative and
• scalable RWE enhancements to close them - including AI-driven ones
• Work with Product and AI teams to scope disease area priorities, definitions and requirements for both
• content products and AI/agent use cases, thinking strategically and commercially
• Ensure content and RWE outputs are AI- and agent-ready - structured, retrievable and semantically
• consistent so they can be reliably consumed by AI solutions, agentic workflows and downstream
• products
• Define the clinical knowledge, decision logic, constraints and validation requirements for agents
• interacting with RWD - ensuring AI-enabled outputs distinguish clearly between observed information,
• calculated outputs, clinical assumptions and inferred conclusions
• Develop validation scenarios that test whether agent outputs remain clinically coherent across
• representative and edge-case patients, identify failure modes where automated interpretation of RWD
• could mislead, and help establish guardrails so AI increases scale without eroding clinical credibility or
• transparency
• Work with data engineering and technology teams to productionise processes at scale
• Assess whether prospective RWD sources can support intended product capabilities and use cases -
• evaluating longitudinality, completeness, representativeness, granularity, linkage and clinical
• specificity across EHR, claims, lab, registry and other healthcare datasets - and advise Product teams
• when data limitations make a proposed capability unreliable or potentially misleading
• Build reusable clinical RWD intellectual property such as: libraries of clinical definitions, cohort
• frameworks, phenotype logic, treatment algorithms, line-of-therapy rules, endpoint definitions, patient
• journey constructs, documented assumptions, edge cases and validation scenarios
• Establish standards for documenting clinical logic, rationale, assumptions and known limitations, with
• versioning and governance so reusable logic can evolve as clinical practice, available data and product
• requirements change - and ensure definitions are not reused outside contexts in which they remain
• valid. Own and improve the processes and tools used to execute projects effectively

Qualifications

Essential

• 5+ years' hands-on experience in RWD study design and statistical ownership, working directly with
• sources such as open/closed claims, lab, EMR/EHR, registries, healthcare coding systems such as ICD
• 10 and NDC, and drug/medication data. Fluency in US real-world data sources and their respective
• strengths and limits
• Strong clinical expertise is essential - the ability to understand disease and treatment pathways,
• interpret healthcare data within the context of real clinical practice, identify clinically implausible
• assumptions or outputs, and reason through ambiguity where clinical reality is only partially
• represented in the data - together with the demonstrated ability to translate that reasoning into cohort
• definitions, endpoint-based business rules and precise, buildable specifications
• Technical credibility to direct and quality-assure the team's work - hands-on experience with statistical
• validation techniques, and sufficient fluency in SQL/Python and R and/or SAS to review analytical
• scripts and outputs, challenge the approach taken and give substantive feedback
• Understanding of the evidence needs of biopharma stakeholders across functions such as Clinical
• Development, Medical Affairs, RWE, HEOR and Market Access, and the ability to translate recurring
• RWD needs into scalable product capabilities
• An MD or equivalent medical qualification is highly desirable. Candidates with other relevant clinical
• qualifications or backgrounds - Bachelor's or Master's in Life Sciences, Pharmacy, Medical Sciences or
• equivalent - will be considered where they demonstrate substantial clinical knowledge and the ability to
• apply clinical reasoning to real-world healthcare data
• 10+ years' experience preferably in a biopharma intelligence, business research or life sciences
• consulting domain, including prior direct line management of a small technical or analytical team
• Cross-functional influence - experience representing a technical team or function to product, data and
• commercial stakeholders, driving aligned decisions and building effective working relationships across
• seniority levels
• Experience supporting the development of data, analytics, content or software products in life sciences
• or healthcare, including building and executing the business case for new capabilities. Strong
• understanding of the drug development lifecycle, and of how life science data is published, captured
• and processed to translate real-world events into structured content
• Excellent proficiency in Microsoft Office, including SharePoint, Excel and PowerPoint, Monday.com,
• LucidChart, Jira, Confluence, GitHub
• Impeccable or native English verbal and written communication, with previous experience working in
• global teams

Desirable

• Knowledge of cloud data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift and Snowflake
• Experience integrating RWD/RWE into AI solutions and agentic workflows, or building content to be
• AI- and agent-ready
• Exposure to outcomes research, HEOR, market access or other biopharma evidence-generation use
• cases, particularly where this has involved the application of real-world data

Our Guiding Principles for success at Norstella:

• 01: Bold, Passionate, and Mission-First
• 02: Integrity, Truth, and Reality
• 03: Kindness, Empathy, and Grace
• 04: Resilience, Mettle, and Perseverance
• 05: Humility, Gratitude, and Learning

Benefits: US

• Medical and Prescription Drug Benefits
• Health Savings Accounts (HSA) or Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• Dental & Vision Benefits
• Basic Life and AD&D Benefits
• 401k Retirement Plan with Company Match
• Company Paid Short & Long-Term Disability
• Paid Parental Leave
• Paid Time Off & Company Holidays

Norstella is an equal opportunity employer. All job applicants will receive equal treatment regardless of race, creed, color, religion, alienage or national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, physical or mental disability or handicap, medical condition, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), marital or domestic partner status, military or veteran status, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, genetic information, reproductive health decision making, or any other protected characteristic as established by federal, state, or local law.

Sometimes the best opportunities are hidden by self-doubt. We disqualify ourselves before we have the

opportunity to be considered. Regardless of where you came from, how you identify, or the path that led you

here - you are welcome. If you read this job description and feel passion and excitement, we're just as excited

about you.