Head of R&D AI & Analytics Strategy

Acadia Pharmaceuticals; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 192,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive base salary

Discretionary bonus and equity

Comprehensive medical/dental/vision

Job summary

Acadia Pharmaceuticals is seeking a Director, R&D AI, Insights & Analytics to lead data, analytics, AI, and insights across R&D, driving faster clinical trial execution and data governance. You will partner with R&D leadership and external partners to shape roadmaps and deliver AI-enabled solutions.

This leadership role focuses on building scalable data platforms, improving decision-making, and delivering measurable value through data-driven innovation across drug development lifecycle.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Life Sciences, or a related field is required; advanced degree preferred.
• 10+ years of progressively responsible experience in R&D analytics, data strategy, clinical development analytics, AI-enabled solutions, digital transformation, or related disciplines.
• Experience within the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or life sciences industry.
• Experience establishing and leading data governance programs, including data ownership, stewardship, ontology, metadata, lineage, business glossary, data quality standards, and FAIR data practices.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the R&D insights, analytics, AI, and data capability roadmap aligned with priorities and strategies.
• Lead the R&D data governance framework across data ownership, stewardship, metadata, and data quality.
• Establish definitions, metrics, and semantic standards to improve trust and reuse of information.
• Partner to define requirements and support design of modern R&D data platforms (data lake/lakehouse/cloud).
• Provide leadership for architecture, platform, technology, and vendor evaluations to ensure scalability and security.
• Build and operationalize benchmarking capabilities and key development metrics.
• Develop dashboards, predictive analytics, and decision-support to improve enrollment and trial performance.
• Identify opportunities to accelerate trials through AI, ML, automation; translate use cases into scalable products.
• Collaborate across functions to identify high-value data opportunities; manage external vendors.

Skills

R&D analytics

AI-enabled solutions

Data governance

Data lake/lakehouse/cloud data

Databricks/Snowflake/AWS/Azure

Clinical performance metrics

Process mapping/capability assessments

Translate business requirements

Travel willingness

GxP/CDISC/SDTM/ADaM/FHIR familiarity

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Life Sciences, or a related field

Advanced degree preferred

10+ years of R&D analytics/AI-enabled solutions experience

Tools

Databricks

Snowflake

Microsoft Fabric

AWS/Azure

Job description

Acadia Pharmaceuticals is seeking a Director, R&D AI, Insights & Analytics to lead data, analytics, AI, and insights across R&D, driving faster clinical trial execution and data governance. You will partner with R&D leadership and external partners to shape roadmaps and deliver AI-enabled solutions.

This leadership role focuses on building scalable data platforms, improving decision-making, and delivering measurable value through data-driven innovation across drug development lifecycle.