Exec Director, Opportunity Strategy Architect

Syneos Health; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Syneos Health is building an Analytics Center of Excellence to improve how data, clinical insight, real-world evidence, feasibility, patient access, site strategy, and operational experience are brought into pre-award decision-making. The Opportunity Strategy Architect is the role that forces the organization to ask better questions before the proposal strategy is set.

This senior position requires understanding clinical trials and drug development to identify when data does not support a

Qualifications

• 10-15+ years of relevant experience in clinical development strategy, CRO strategic solutions, clinical operations strategy, portfolio/asset strategy, strategic feasibility, RWE strategy, trial innovation, bid defense strategy, or life sciences consulting.
• Strong understanding of how clinical trials are designed, scoped, bid, awarded, operationalized, and delivered.
• Experience supporting RFPs, RFIs, bid defenses, strategic account opportunities, complex proposals, or clinical trial advisory work.
• Demonstrated ability to challenge assumptions and influence cross-functional teams in complex, time-sensitive environments.
• Experience using data and analytics to shape strategy; data literacy and skepticism are essential.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent; advanced degree in life sciences, public health, business, health economics, or related field preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead structured opportunity interrogation for assigned Category 3/4/5 or strategically important opportunities.
• Ask simple but powerful questions about client intent, asset strategy, protocol purpose, competitive context, current vendor dynamics, and what the client is really trying to achieve.
• Pressure-test whether the protocol, enrollment assumptions, country/site mix, patient access plan, recruitment/retention approach, and delivery model are credible.
• Identify what data and analytics are needed to support or challenge the proposed strategy.
• Partner with data science, RWD analytics, RWE methods, feasibility, recruitment/retention, patient access, site intelligence, integrated solutions, pricing, proposal teams, BD, DSDs, and therapeutic leaders.
• Translate insights into an opportunity diagnostic: client intent, asset objective, assumptions, risk hypotheses, data needs, recommended strategy, solution implications, and bid-defense win themes.
• Influence or escalators through agreed governance when the team is ignoring data, overclaiming evidence, or defaulting to a weak or traditional strategy.
• Support proposal and bid-defense teams by clarifying the differentiated story, likely objections, and data-backed proof points.
• Document assumptions and hand off strategy, risks, and mitigation logic to delivery if the opportunity is awarded.

Skills

Strategic curiosity

Drug Development lens

Clinical trial fluency

Data judgment

Constructive challenge

Translation ability

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Advanced degree preferred (life sciences/health economics/public health/business)

Job description

Exec Director, Opportunity Strategy Architect

Syneos Health® is a leading fully-integrated life sciences services organization built to accelerate customer success. We partner with innovators at every point across the drug development and commercialization continuum, helping them navigate complexity, anticipate change and accelerate progress.

Every day we perform better because of how we work together, as one team, each the best at what we do. We bring together talented experts across a broad spectrum of business critical corporate functions. Every role plays an essential part in enabling our customers to achieve their goals. Our teams are agile, collaborative, and committed to delivering—for each other, for our customers, and ultimately for the people who rely on the services we support.

Discover what your 25,000 future colleagues already know:

Why Syneos Health

We are passionate about developing our people, through career development and progression; supportive and engaged line management; technical and therapeutic area training; peer recognition and total rewards program.

We are committed to building an inclusive culture - where you can authentically be yourself. Central to this is our purpose - Driven to Deliver - which captures the passion of our colleagues to show up each day and shape solutions that have the ability to dramatically impact someone’s life.

We are continuously building the company we all want to work for and our customers want to work with. Why? Because we know that when we bring together smart colleagues from across the world, we can shape the future of healthcare, driving impact for customers and defining the pace of patient progress.

Job Responsibilities

Company

Syneos Health is a leading, fully integrated biopharmaceutical solutions organization that partners with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to develop and commercialize new therapies. Formed in 2017 through the merger of INC Research and inVentiv Health, the business combines clinical development and commercial capabilities within a single platform, supporting customers from early-stage trials through product launch and market adoption.

With more than 25,000 employees globally and operations across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, Syneos Health serves a broad mix of large pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechnology organizations. The company’s integrated model, global scale, therapeutic expertise, and long-standing customer relationships position it as a differentiated partner within the biopharma services ecosystem.

Syneos Health was taken private in 2023 by a consortium of private equity investors after operating as a public company. Today, the business generates approximately $5 billion in annual revenue and is focused on defining its next phase of growth, including how it sharpens its strategic focus and evolves within an increasingly dynamic and technology-driven market environment.

The opportunity

Syneos is building an Analytics Center of Excellence to improve how data, clinical insight, real-world evidence, feasibility, patient access, site strategy, and operational experience are brought into pre-award decision-making. The Opportunity Strategy Architect is the role that forces the organization to ask better questions before the proposal strategy is set.

This person does not need to be the therapeutic expert or medical expert. They must understand clinical trials and drug development well enough to identify when the stated approach does not make sense, when the data does not support the strategy, and when the team is defaulting to the traditional answer instead of the best answer.

Core positioning

The Opportunity Strategy Architect is the strategic conscience of the opportunity: the person who asks why, challenges assumptions, determines what data is needed, and helps convert insight into a client-specific strategy that can win and be delivered.

The role

The Opportunity Strategy Architect is assigned to high-value or strategically important opportunities to assess, qualify, and shape the strategy before proposal and bid defense decisions are locked. The role must be constructively challenging, evidence-based, and commercially practical.

• Lead structured opportunity interrogation for assigned Category 3/4/5 or strategically important opportunities.
• Ask simple but powerful questions about client intent, asset strategy, protocol purpose, competitive context, current vendor dynamics, and what the client is really trying to achieve.
• Pressure-test whether the protocol, enrollment assumptions, country/site mix, patient access plan, recruitment/retention approach, and delivery model are credible.
• Identify what data and analytics are needed to support or challenge the proposed strategy.
• Partner with data science, RWD analytics, RWE methods, feasibility, recruitment/retention, patient access, site intelligence, integrated solutions, pricing, proposal teams, BD, DSDs, and therapeutic leaders.
• Translate insights into an opportunity diagnostic: client intent, asset objective, assumptions, risk hypotheses, data needs, recommended strategy, solution implications, and bid-defense win themes.
• Influence or escalators through agreed governance when the team is ignoring data, overclaiming evidence, or defaulting to a weak or traditional strategy.
• Support proposal and bid-defense teams by clarifying the differentiated story, likely objections, and data-backed proof points.
• Document assumptions and hand off strategy, risks, and mitigation logic to delivery if the opportunity is awarded.

Candidate profile

The ideal candidate is a clinical development strategist who brings intellectual curiosity, commercial judgment, operational credibility, data literacy, and the ability to challenge conventional thinking constructively. They should be able to move across client strategy, clinical trial execution, evidence, patient access, proposal strategy, and delivery risk.

• Strategic curiosity: Identifies the client’s trial rationale, asset strategy, and unstated needs in the RFP by asking clear, targeted questions.
• Drug Development lens: Connects the protocol to lifecycle strategy, regulatory commitments, market access, competitive positioning, evidence generation, partnership, or divestiture goals.
• Clinical trial fluency: Understands enough about trial design, feasibility, enrollment, site operations, patient burden, and delivery risk to recognize when something does not make sense.
• Data judgment: Uses data directionally, challenges weak assumptions, identifies gaps and limitations, and prevents teams from ignoring inconvenient evidence.
• Constructive challenge: Can ask hard questions without being abrasive and can influence without direct authority.
• Translation ability: Turns messy, fragmented inputs into a clear strategic point of view and a proposal-ready story.

Professional qualifications

• 10-15+ years of relevant experience in clinical development strategy, CRO strategic solutions, clinical operations strategy, portfolio/asset strategy, strategic feasibility, RWE strategy, trial innovation, bid defense strategy, or life sciences consulting.
• Strong understanding of how clinical trials are designed, scoped, bid, awarded, operationalized, and delivered.
• Experience supporting RFPs, RFIs, bid defenses, strategic account opportunities, complex proposals, or clinical trial advisory work.
• Demonstrated ability to challenge assumptions and influence cross-functional teams in complex, time-sensitive environments.
• Experience using data and analytics to shape strategy; direct data science expertise is not required, but data literacy and skepticism are essential.
• Familiarity with feasibility, enrollment modeling, site/country selection, patient access, recruitment/retention strategy, RWD/RWE, decentralized trial solutions, or competitive trial intelligence is preferred.
• Experience with multi-region or global clinical trials preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required; advanced degree in life sciences, public health, business, health economics, epidemiology, or related field preferred.

Personal characteristics

• Relentlessly curious and willing to ask obvious questions that others skip.
• Comfortable saying, “Help me understand why we are going against the data.”
• Pragmatic and commercially minded; not academic for the sake of being academic.
• Able to challenge with respect, precision, and calm confidence.
• Uses sound judgment, intellectual honesty, and constructive influence; remains open to being wrong when the evidence shifts.
• Able to operate with incomplete information and still land a clear recommendation.
• Strong storyteller who can connect data, client intent, and execution reality.
• Not attached to legacy ways of working or standard proposal answers.
• Strong written and verbal communicator with senior stakeholder presence.

Get to know Syneos Health

Over the past 5 years, we have worked with 94% of all Novel FDA Approved Drugs, 95% of EMA Authorized Products and over 200 Studies across 73,000 Sites and 675,000+ Trial patients.

No matter what your role is, you’ll take the initiative and challenge the status quo with us in a highly competitive and ever-changing environment. Learn more about Syneos Health.

http://www.syneoshealth.com

Additional Information

Tasks, duties, and responsibilities as listed in this job description are not exhaustive. The Company, at its sole discretion and with no prior notice, may assign other tasks, duties, and job responsibilities. Equivalent experience, skills, and/or education will also be considered so qualifications of incumbents may differ from those listed in the Job Description. The Company, at its sole discretion, will determine what constitutes as equivalent to the qualifications described above. Further, nothing contained herein should be construed to create an employment contract. Occasionally, required skills/experiences for jobs are expressed in brief terms. Any language contained herein is intended to fully comply with all obligations imposed by the legislation of each country in which it operates, including the implementation of the EU Equality Directive, in relation to the recruitment and employment of its employees. The Company is committed to compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, including the provision of reasonable accommodations, when appropriate, to assist employees or applicants to perform the essential functions of the job.