Director, DHT Coordinator, GDMS Data Integration and Automation - Hybrid
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Benefits offered by this job
Job summary
Merck is seeking a Director, Digital Health Technology (DHT) to lead strategy and execution of DHT delivery across a Therapeutic Area, ensuring lifecycle management from pre-production to decommissioning with GxP compliance. The role drives process optimization, service provider performance, and enterprise alignment.
The role emphasizes leadership, training, and capability-building, partnering with analytics and data standards teams, and ensuring audit-ready documentation across programs.
Qualifications
- Deep subject matter expertise in eCOA/DHT or clinical data systems.
- Experience leading large, cross-functional teams and programs.
- Strong understanding of SDLC, regulatory compliance, and data integration.
Responsibilities
- Provide portfolio-level oversight for DHT delivery across Therapeutic Areas.
- Ensure TA-wide standards, lifecycle management, and regulatory readiness.
- Lead governance, optimization, and capability-building initiatives.
Skills
Education
Tools
Job description
The Director, Digital Health Technology (DHT) leads strategy and execution of DHT delivery across a Therapeutic Area, providing portfolio-level oversight and accountability for escalation management, and serving as a design authority. This role ensures TA-wide standards, consistent architectures, and end-to-end lifecycle management—from pre-production readiness through in-life change control to decommissioning—while maintaining compliance with GxP, Part 11, and departmental SOPs. Accountability includes high-impact deliverables, managing service provider performance, driving process optimization and technology enablement, and partnering with DI&A and data standards teams to align with enterprise strategy. Additionally, the position builds long-term capability through training, mentorship, and succession planning, while staying close enough to ensure operational excellence.
- Accountable for portfolio and programs SDLC delivery anticipating regulatory/compliance risks and driving product, process, and service improvements while ensuring consistency, scalability, and compliance (GxP, Part 11, Departmental SOPs).
- Oversee full lifecycle management across TA portfolio, including pre-production readiness, post-production monitoring, change control, and timely decommissioning/archival with audit-ready documentation.
- Hold Service Providers accountable for quality and innovation to achieve strategic milestones and objectives; ensure service levels are met or exceeded.
- Build collaborative relationships and take a leadership role to align Service Providers and internal stakeholders on fit-for-purpose solutions tied to study and portfolio milestones, contributing to departmental strategy execution.
- Provide oversight for end-to-end delivery of complex data-management activities across multiple studies and systems, anticipating regulatory/compliance issues and solving unique challenges with broad business impact.
- Contribute to and shape departmental strategy by initiating and leading high-impact projects and initiatives.
- Oversight of end-to-end data integrity and compliance across all studies and systems, proactively identifying internal/external risks and recommending improvements.
- Monitor data integrations and quality, ensuring robust interoperability (APIs, files, schedules), resiliency, and error handling; anticipate systemic issues; support defect triage and drive timely resolution.
- Provide technical leadership, guidance, and reviews; advise on design trade-offs and complex data mapping/reporting/archiving.
- Contribute to departmental strategy by establishing and scaling TA-level standards, templates, and design patterns for DHT setup, flows, and reporting that improve products, processes, and services.
- Represent DHT in governance and leadership and industry forums; anticipate emerging business and regulatory issues, and recommend strategic actions.
- Drive process optimization and technology enablement; identify and implement improvements (templates, test automation, dashboards); scale best practices and tools.
- Partner with DI&A and data standards teams on roadmaps and alignment to enterprise data strategy.
- Lead adoption and change across Service Providers and internal stakeholders to standardize DHT systems, acting as facilitator and mentor to empower others.
- Anticipate and prepare for regulatory inspections and audits, leading readiness with expert guidance.
- Proactively identify risks, dependencies, and cross-functional impacts; recommend strategic mitigations that solve unique, complex problems with broad impact.
- Define OKRs/KPIs; report organizational performance, risks, and investment needs; recommend data-driven actions to leadership.
- Ensure maintenance of SOPs, reference documents, and execution resources relevant to DHT setup and operations.
- Lead capability building: define curricula, mentorship models, and competency frameworks; champion knowledge sharing and communities of practice; provide input into succession planning.
- Provide leadership for training and education for stakeholders; develop training materials and support onboarding and recognition programs.
- Advanced expertise with electronic Clinical Outcome Assessment (eCOA) or Digital Health Technology (DHT) platforms used in clinical trials
- Expert-level knowledge of the clinical development process, DHT, electronic data capture, preferably through submission; thorough knowledge of clinical data management.
- Advanced understanding of UAT processes, system validation, and regulatory compliance requirements for clinical data systems
- Demonstrated ability to set TA-wide requirements for DHT configuration, integration, validation, and observability.
- Distill complex issues into decision-ready narratives; frame options, risks, and recommendations to influence senior decisions.
- Strong influence skills and able to drive adoption of standardized methods/ways of working; mobilize cross-functional champions and measure uptake.
- Align senior stakeholders on objectives, interfaces, and responsibilities; enforce clean handoffs and resolve conflicts.
- Coordinate decisions across regions/time zones; use asynchronous mechanisms to maintain momentum.
- Apply strong project management skills to drive on-time, high-quality delivery; lead technical team meetings, coordinate resources, and communicate status, risks, and mitigations to senior leadership.
- Ability to evaluate platforms, build vs. buy, PoCs, performance/cost trade-offs at scale.
- Ability to engage service provider, leadership, and industry forums; represent team professionally and credibly under pressure; maintain resilience and composure
- Business Savviness | Anticipate business and regulatory issues and shape strategy accordingly; connect technical expertise to organizational and industry context to make strategic recommendations
- Influence | Lead large teams / projects, help shape departmental strategy, influence leaders, peers, and cross-functional partners to align on decisions and strategic direction
- Change Catalyst | Drive improvements (e.g., organizational and cultural changes) with broader impact; demonstrate adaptability and ability to collaborate with others to make change successful; help others overcome resistance to change
- Bachelor's Degree, preferably in life sciences, computer science, engineering or related discipline with a minimum of 10 years’ experience in eCOA/DHT or equivalent relevant industry experience, including:
- Demonstrate deep subject matter expertise
- People management skills
- Advanced Degree (Masters or Doctorate), preferably in life sciences, computer science, engineering or related discipline with a minimum of 8 years’ experience in eCOA/DHT or equivalent relevant industry experience, including:
- Demonstrate deep subject matter expertise
- People management skills
- Clinical Data Management
- Clinical Development
- Clinical Outcomes
- Clinical Study Management
- Data Integration
- Regulatory Compliance
- Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
- Stakeholder Management
- System Validation
- Technical Knowledge
US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:
USA - Pennsylvania - North Wales (Upper Gwynedd)
$173,200.00 - $272,600.00
This range reflects the Company's reasonable expectation of the base salary applicable to this role at the time of posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs. The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.
We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.
Additional location(s): Please note the salary range above applies to the Primary Location of the position. Where a role has other listed locations, different compensation guidelines may apply. You may find the salary ranges for additional locations below. If the salary range is not listed for the location you are applying to, our Talent Acquisition team will provide further information to you relevant to your location.
San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance.
Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities.
As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:
EEOC Know Your Rights
EEOC GINA Supplement
We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.
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Regular
No relocation
No
10%
Hybrid
1st - Day
No
N/A
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