Senior Director, PHAROS Program — AI/ML & Sensing Lead

The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP); Rockville (MD); On-site; USD 206,000 - 292,000; Full time

Job summary

The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) is seeking a Senior Director, PHAROS Program to lead a cross-disciplinary effort integrating sensing, AI/ML analytics, and hardware-software-data systems with end-to-end accountability across USP and consortium partners.

You will drive prototype development, field testing, risk management, and sponsor commitments, leveraging TA1/TA2 expertise and partnerships with ARPA-H and industry to deliver a field-deployable solution within 4.5 years.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant scientific, engineering, computing, or quantitative discipline.
• Minimum 12 years of relevant experience, including leadership of complex scientific, engineering, technology, or product-development programs.
• At least five years of accountable program, product, or technical leadership experience involving multiple workstreams, external partners, or matrixed teams.
• Experience in pharmaceutical science, analytical technologies, compendial science, or regulatory science.
• Technical depth in at least one PHAROS-relevant TA1 or TA2 discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to lead across organizational boundaries, make complex technical and programmatic tradeoffs, manage risk, and drive results.
• Strong executive, technical, written, and interpersonal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead integrated PHAROS execution, including scope, milestones, deliverables, resources, dependencies, risks, and sponsor commitments to ensure the ultimate program deliverable is realized – a field-deployable prototype that meets all program requirements by the end of 4.5 years.
• With the dedicated support from the GHMS Program Delivery Team, coordinate USP teams, technical leaders, and external consortium partners to deliver an integrated program outcome.
• Lead development of PHAROS as a hardware-software-data system, from requirements and architecture through prototype integration, verification, validation, and field testing.
• Drive iterative design-build-test cycles and progression toward a reliable, usable, field-deployable solution.
• Establish effective program governance, decision-making, risk management, performance reviews, and partner accountability.
• Make and facilitate cross-program technical and programmatic tradeoffs while preserving the scientific leadership of the Co-Principal Investigators.
• Contribute technical expertise from either TA1—such as analytical science, spectroscopy, NMR, sensing, instrumentation, or pharmaceutical science—or TA2—such as AI/ML, chemometrics, signal processing, multimodal fusion, or digital decision systems.
• Apply systems thinking to evaluate evidence, challenge assumptions, manage technical interfaces, and resolve integration issues.
• Leverage USP’s standards, reference science, Expert Committees, industry relationships, and sample-access capabilities to strengthen PHAROS development and validation.
• Represent PHAROS with ARPA-H, consortium partners, industry and healthcare stakeholders, and USP leadership.

Skills

Leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Executive communication

Strategic thinking

Education

Bachelor’s degree in relevant field

Job description

The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) is seeking a Senior Director, PHAROS Program to lead a cross-disciplinary effort integrating sensing, AI/ML analytics, and hardware-software-data systems with end-to-end accountability across USP and consortium partners.

You will drive prototype development, field testing, risk management, and sponsor commitments, leveraging TA1/TA2 expertise and partnerships with ARPA-H and industry to deliver a field-deployable solution within 4.5 years.