Life Sciences R&D Strategy Senior Manager

Accenture; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Accenture Life Sciences R&D practice seeks a Senior Manager or Principal Director to drive AI-enabled transformation across discovery, development, and operations. You will partner with biopharma leaders to define strategy and deliver end-to-end programs.

You will lead engagements, build client relationships, and contribute to practice growth through thought leadership while collaborating across Accenture businesses to scale impact.

Qualifications

• Senior-level R&D consultant with life sciences experience.
• Proven ability to lead complex strategy engagements.
• Strong business development and client leadership.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex R&D strategy engagements from problem framing through delivery with measurable impact.
• Advise clients on R&D transformation priorities, including strategy and pipeline.

Job description

We are seeking a Senior Manager or Principal Director to play a critical leadership role within our growing R&D strategy team to focus on R&D reinvention across the value chain: helping clients move beyond incremental improvement to AI-enabled transformation of how they discover, develop, and deliver medicines. This high-impact role sits at the intersection of biopharma R&D, digital innovation, and enterprise transformation — advising R&D leaders at the world's leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

You will lead end-to-end strategy engagements, build lasting client relationships across R&D functions, drive business development, and contribute to practice growth through thought leadership and capability building. This is a balanced role: part trusted advisor, part business builder, part practice champion. You will be expected to partner across the various Accenture businesses to be successful in this role.

We Are:

Accenture helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed for organizations across industries. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and lead in the safe, widespread adoption of AI, and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. We bring together the talent of our approximately 799,000 people with proprietary assets and platforms, deep process and industry expertise, and leading ecosystem relationships to deliver end-to-end solutions and measurable outcomes at scale. Through our Reinvention Services, we offer broad expertise across Cybersecurity, Digital Core, Finance, Industry and Enterprise, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering, and Talent, with advanced capabilities in AI and Data, Industry and Process, and Technology. We serve approximately 9,000 clients and generated approximately $70 billion in FY25 revenue. Visit us at www.accenture.com .

Accenture's Life Sciences R&D practice helps biopharma organizations transform discovery, early development, and development operations through scientific strategy, data and AI integration, and operational reinvention. We work with R&D leaders — Chief Scientific and Medical Officers, Heads of R&D Functions, SVP and VP-level capability owners — to shape R&D strategy, accelerate pipeline decisions, and build the capabilities needed to compete in the age of AI-driven drug discovery and development.

This is a growth-focused practice with strong momentum and a clear path to Managing Director for high performers.

You Are:

An R&D expert with proven work experience in the Life Sciences R&D industry. You are a strategic problem solver with extensive consulting and industry experience. You are a clear and effective communicator, and you have an open, relatable manner with clients and colleagues. You perform well in an agile, fast-paced working environment. You know how to balance being a leader with contributing to the collective efforts of the team. You have led business development and sales origination efforts to provide transformative programs and targeted consulting engagements.

You have energy and drive in abundance, along with personal resilience, a passion for serving clients, and a love of continual learning. You have a flair for breaking down challenges and processes into logical parts and constructing crystal-clear reasoning and analyses—an aptitude you use to decimate problems.

The Work (Role Responsibility)

• Lead complex R&D strategy engagements from problem framing through delivery, ensuring measurable client impact.

• Advise clients on R&D transformation priorities including strategy, pipeline