Senior Director, Head Launch Excellence

Amgen; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Amgen seeks a Senior Director, Head Launch Excellence to lead a strategic, global Launch Excellence capability within Global Marketing. You will partner with Global, Regional and Affiliate teams to define an enterprise LEX model and drive readiness, governance and escalation.

The role requires proven serial launch leadership, strong people management, and the ability to apply digital tools and AI-enabled workflows to improve speed, quality and consistency across markets, including the GwL

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• Extensive biopharmaceutical commercial experience, ideally 22 - 26 years across global, regional and local marketing and commercial roles.
• Demonstrated serial launch track record: personally led, shaped or played a senior cross-functional role in multiple product launches across brands, markets and launch archetypes.
• Direct experience leading launch excellence, launch readiness, launch operations or multi-market execution, including integrated launch plans, critical-path milestones, risk mitigation and launch governance.
• Proven people management experience, including building teams, setting operating models and coaching talent in complex matrix environments.
• Demonstrated ability to engage senior stakeholders, influence across functions and communicate clearly with executive audiences.
• Strong project management, organizational and analytical skills, with comfort using dashboards, KPIs and risk-based decision-making.
• Experience with digital tools, dashboards, AI-enabled workflows or automation in commercial operations, launch readiness or launch execution preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead the LEX operating model, defining launch-clock scope, global-to-local handoffs, governance, decision rights and service levels.
• Set quality standards for launch readiness planning, milestone preparation, LRRs and leadership touchpoints.
• Partner with Global, Regional and Market teams to translate launch strategy into high-quality launch preparation and market activation support.
• Implement clear rules for guided and self-service LEX support based on brand priority and market relevance.
• Hire, onboard and manage the AIN Launch Excellence team with defined interfaces to Global, Regional and Market stakeholders.
• Build and maintain LEX assets such as dashboards, tools and AI-enabled workflows.
• Establish governance, reporting and risk management routines with KPI definitions and escalation mechanisms.
• Develop onboarding, learning modules and communities of practice to scale learnings across brands.

Skills

Serial launch leadership

Global and local marketing

People leadership

Strategic and operational judgment

Stakeholder influence

Pragmatic innovation mindset

Education

Bachelor's degree

Advanced degree

Job description

Join Amgen’s Mission of Serving Patients At Amgen, if you feel like you’re part of something bigger, it’s because you are. Our shared mission—to serve patients living with serious illnesses—drives all that we do. Since 1980, we’ve helped pioneer the world of biotech in our fight against the world’s toughest diseases. With our focus on four therapeutic areas –Oncology, Inflammation, General Medicine, and Rare Disease– we reach millions of patients each year. Amgen is advancing a broad and deep pipeline of medicines to treat cancer, heart disease, inflammatory conditions, rare diseases, and obesity-related conditions. As a member of the Amgen team, you’ll help make a lasting impact on the lives of patients as we research, manufacture, and deliver innovative medicines to help people live longer, fuller happier lives. Our award-winning culture is collaborative, innovative, and science based. If you have a passion for challenges and the opportunities that lay within them, you’ll thrive as part of the Amgen team. Join us and transform the lives of patients while transforming your career.

What You Will Do

Let’s do this. Let’s change the world. The Senior Director, Head Launch Excellence is a strategic and operationally experienced serial launch leader in Amgen's Global Marketing organization, bringing pattern recognition from multiple biopharmaceutical launches to shape and run Launch Excellence (LEX) as a practical global launch operating capability. This role partners across Global, Regional and Affiliate teams to establish an enterprise LEX capability as part of the Global with Local (GwL) model. The LEX lead will define hands-on, guided and self-service support levels, identify critical-path risks early and build the Launch Excellence capability in the Amgen India Capability Center (AIN), including AI-enabled automation for repeatable launch activities.

Location / Travel

We are posting this role in multiple locations including US, India, Europe. Travel expected ~0-20%.

Key Responsibilities

LEX Operating Model Leadership: Define and operationalize the LEX operating model, including launch-clock scope, global-to-local handoffs, governance, decision rights, service levels and escalation paths.

Launch Readiness Standards & Launch Judgment: Set quality standards for launch readiness planning, milestone preparation, LRRs, leadership touchpoints, risk and decision logs and launch performance, using serial launch judgment to pressure-test plans.

Global-to-Local Marketing Integration: Partner with Global teams, ABM, regions and affiliates to translate launch strategy into high-quality launch preparation, integrated launch plans and practical market activation support. Partner with Marketing and ABM teams to identify and close launch-specific guidance and process gaps.

Service-Level & Market Archetype Management: Implement clear rules for hands-on, guided and self-service LEX support based on brand priority, market relevance, launch complexity, critical-path risk and escalation triggers.

AIN Capability Center Leadership: Hire, onboard and manage the AIN Launch Excellence team, setting role clarity, intake processes, service menus, quality expectations and ways of working with Global, Regional and Market teams. This team acts as the scalable delivery engine for LEX, with clear interfaces to Global, Regional and Market stakeholders.

Tools, Templates & AI Enablement: Build and maintain practical LEX assets such as launch dashboards, LRR tools, quality checks, GM checklists, self-assessments, KPI dictionary, playbooks and AI-enabled workflows.

Governance, Reporting & Risk Management: Establish launch readiness routines, readiness heatmaps, KPI definitions, risk triggers, decision records and escalation mechanisms that give senior leaders clear visibility into launch readiness and trade-offs.

Learning Loop & Capability Building: Develop onboarding, learning modules, communities of practice, reusable launch cases, after-action reviews and post-launch retrospectives so learnings scale across brands and markets. Establish global launch forums to share lessons learned, and best practices across brands, accelerating cross-brand learning for teams working toward similar launch timelines.

Stakeholder Engagement: Build trusted relationships with global, regional and local leaders, ensuring LEX improves launch quality and focus without becoming a substitute for brand strategy ownership or local accountability.

Core Competencies

• Serial launch leadership: Proven pattern recognition from multiple biopharmaceutical launches, with the ability to pressure-test plans, anticipate risks and know what good readiness looks like across launch types and markets.
• Global and local marketing expertise: Deep experience across global brand strategy, regional translation and local execution, ideally across launch, in-line and lifecycle brands.
• People leadership: Demonstrated success hiring, leading and developing teams, ideally including offshore or capability-center teams.
• Strategic and operational judgment: Ability to connect brand strategy, launch sequencing, market needs, governance, milestones and execution into a practical operating model.
• Stakeholder influence: Strong credibility with senior leaders and ability to align Global, Regional and Market stakeholders without relying on formal authority.
• Pragmatic innovation mindset: Ability to apply AI, automation, dashboards and knowledge management to improve speed, quality and reuse.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required; advanced degree preferred.
• Extensive biopharmaceutical commercial experience, ideally 22 - 26 years across global, regional and local marketing and commercial roles.
• Demonstrated serial launch track record: personally led, shaped or played a senior cross-functional role in multiple product launches across brands, markets and launch archetypes.
• Direct experience leading launch excellence, launch readiness, launch operations or multi-market execution, including integrated launch plans, critical-path milestones, risk mitigation and launch governance.
• Proven people management experience, including building teams, setting operating models and coaching talent in complex matrix environments.
• Demonstrated ability to engage senior stakeholders, influence across functions and communicate clearly with executive audiences.
• Strong project management, organizational and analytical skills, with comfort using dashboards, KPIs and risk-based decision-making.
• Experience with digital tools, dashboards, AI-enabled workflows or automation in commercial operations, launch readiness or launch execution preferred.

What You Can Expect Of Us

As we work to develop treatments that take care of others, we also work to care for your professional and personal growth and well-being. From our competitive benefits to our collaborative culture, we’ll support your journey every step of the way. In addition to the base salary, Amgen offers competitive and comprehensive Total Rewards Plans that are aligned with local industry standards.

Amgen is an Equal Opportunity employer and will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.