Sr. Director, Program Management

neurocrine; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Neurocrine Biosciences is seeking a Senior Director to lead a team of program managers, converting disease-area strategy into actionable development plans. You will drive portfolio prioritization, investment trade-offs, and cross-functional alignment across discovery to lifecycle management.

The role demands deep scientific fluency in drug development combined with superior program and portfolio management capabilities, ability to engage senior leaders, and a track record of delivering

Qualifications

• Demonstrates strategic leadership across therapeutic areas.
• Manages portfolio strategy and prioritization across development programs.
• Partners with cross-functional teams to drive execution and governance.
• Leads teams from discovery through lifecycle management.

Responsibilities

• Lead portfolio prioritization, scenario analyses, and investment trade-offs.
• Structure and guide governance bodies, ensuring decision quality.
• Oversee program management, budgets, milestones, and risk management.
• Develop leadership within the portfolio teams and align with leadership across org.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Portfolio management

Cross-functional collaboration

R&D program management

Job description

Who We Are:

Neurocrine Biosciences is a leading biopharmaceutical company with a simple purpose: to relieve suffering for people with great needs. We are dedicated to discovering, developing and commercializing life-changing treatments for patients with under-addressed neurological, psychiatric, endocrine and immunological disorders. The company's diverse portfolio includes FDA-approved treatments for tardive dyskinesia, chorea associated with Huntington's disease, classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia, hyperphagia in Prader-Willi syndrome, endometriosis* and uterine fibroids*, as well as a robust pipeline including multiple compounds in mid- to late-phase clinical development across our core therapeutic areas. For more than three decades, we have applied our unique insight into neuroscience and the interconnections between brain and body systems to treat complex conditions. We relentlessly pursue medicines to ease the burden of debilitating diseases and disorders, because you deserve brave science. For more information, visit neurocrine.com, and follow the company on LinkedIn, X, Facebook and YouTube. ( *in collaboration with AbbVie )

At Neurocrine, strong leadership drives both business results and team success. We look for leaders who think strategically, anticipate what's ahead and set clear direction, while building and empowering high-performing teams. Successful leaders foster an environment where people are motivated to do their best work and deliver meaningful, measurable impact through sound decision-making and accountability.

About the Role:

The Senior Director will lead a team of program managers with varying levels of experience and will translate therapeutic area and disease-area strategy into integrated, executable development plans. This role drives portfolio prioritization and investment trade-off decisions and leads cross-functional program teams from discovery through registration, launch, and lifecycle management.

The successful candidate combines deep scientific fluency in drug development with expert program and portfolio management capabilities and demonstrates the judgment to independently engage in scientific, clinical, development, and portfolio strategy discussions at the most senior levels of the organization. Drive team performance and communication to ensure cross-functional alignment on goals, priorities, and timelines and that teams are equipped to deliver milestones on or ahead of schedule. Connect cross-functional partners and develop strong relationships with key functional stakeholder groups and their leadership across the organization. Provide strategic and operational leadership across assigned therapeutic areas and programs, translating portfolio and development strategy into executable plans. Identify barriers, risks, and cross-functional dependencies early and work with teams and leadership to develop pragmatic solutions.

Your Contributions (include, but are not limited to):

Portfolio Strategy & Strategic Partnership

• Serve as an operating partner to therapeutic area and program leadership, coordinating cross-functional, disease-area, and portfolio lifecycle strategy and driving alignment from strategy through execution
• Lead portfolio prioritization, scenario planning, and investment and resource trade-off analyses; identify asset and portfolio inflection points, acceleration opportunities, and critical risks
• Independently develop and review program strategies and development plans, evaluate trade-offs, and recommend enterprise-minded actions to senior leadership
• Connect integrated development across the value chain, including product design, CMC and manufacturing, biomarkers, clinical endpoints, regulatory gates, and commercial readiness

Governance & Decision Quality

• Structure therapeutic area council and asset-team discussions to enable robust, agile decision-making; prepare teams for governance readiness and help them navigate decision bodies effectively
• Own portfolio reviews, executive reporting, and decision-ready communications to R&D and executive leadership
• Apply decision analytics, including probability-of-success frameworks, capacity and budget modeling, and integrated portfolio data, to improve decision speed and quality and surface issues early

Program & Portfolio Operations

• Ensure program quality across the portfolio, including integrated development plans, critical paths, risk and issue management, recovery plans, budgets, and resource health
• Oversee program management assignments and resource allocation, driving consistency and shared standards across asset and disease-area teams
• Maintain accountability for major portfolio milestones, including first-in-human, proof-of-concept, pivotal study starts, submissions, approvals, and commercialization
• Evolve the program-team operating model, operating cadence, and program management standards as the portfolio and organization grow

People Leadership

• Recruit, develop, and retain program mana