Associate Director - Customer Behaviour Analytics

Job Description

Associate Director - Customer Behaviour Analytics

The Opportunity

This role sits within the Customer Knowledge & Measurement (CK&M) vertical of Digital Human Health (DHH). The Associate Director, Customer Behavior Analytics owns the "know the customer" of CK&M: the model-build and insight-generation layer that produces the customer understanding the rest of CK&M (Field & CRM Engagement) acts on and measures.

The Associate Director will be responsible for leading the analytics that define who matter and why: HCP / account / consumer segmentation, micro-segmentation, propensity and risk-stratification modelling, integrated customer profiling, KOL identification, content-affinity modelling, campaign analytics and the data-product spine that powers downstream activation. The team supports the US Commercial Organization, informing customer engagement strategy.

The role is a key node in evolving the India Hub from delivery support to strategic analytics partner across the customer-insight value chain.

Role Overview

The Associate Director will lead a team of 15+ covering capability domains under Customer Behavior Analytics. The candidate must be able to lead direct teams and orchestrate cross-functional insights pods spanning DHH, Data Strategy & Solutions, IT and the broader DHH organization. The individual will demonstrate consistently strong leadership, the ability to work objectively in ambiguity, strong partnership skills, and a culture of continual learning.

The preferred candidate will have an entrepreneurial spirit, a consultative and strategic mindset, deep customer-analytics experience in pharma / biotech (segmentation, micro-segmentation, campaign analytics, productized customer-data offerings), fluency in technology (AI, agentic, GenAI), and a demonstrated record of producing actionable insights from analytics. The individual should have a strong understanding of the US data landscape (claims, EMR / EHR, Rx, activity, promotional data, content-engagement data) and the ability to translate ambiguous business questions into advanced, scalable analytical solutions.

What will you do in this role:

• Customer model-build: Lead the development of customer-understanding models that drive downstream activation and measurement: HCP segmentation (personal / non-personal), account / IDN segmentation, patient segmentation and profiling, propensity models (writer / non-writer), patient risk-stratification (initial model build with analog / business rules, progressing to ML), and early adopter / follower analysis.
• Integrated Customer Profile (ICP) and KOL build: Own the analytics build for ICP and the KOL-identification capability. Define data inputs, model logic, refresh cadence and validation criteria.
• Patient Insights Engine (PIE) and consumer extensions: Lead the build and evolution of the customer-data spine across PIE phases (CDM, Business Rules, Data Augmentation including EMR, and Predictive Models) and the consumer extension (PIECON) where applicable.
• Content Affinity: Drive micro-segmentation analytics to enable targeted content recommendations and quantify which content resonates with distinct segments, informing both brand strategy and Field & CRM execution.
• Team leadership and cross-functional orchestration: Lead and mentor Senior Managers (and the specialists / interns reporting into them), providing guidance on best practices in data analytics, modelling, validation and insight synthesis. Manage team workload proactively and ensure optimal resource utilization. Lead cross-functional insights pods in addition to direct teams.
• Prioritization and value tracking: Understand the full book of work underway and planned for each disease area or business unit. Work with BU LT to prioritize against the team’s capacity. For prioritized work, engage cross-functional teams to articulate the value and impact of each piece. Encourage the mindset to articulate the "so what" and "now what" and to track realized business value.
• Stakeholder collaboration: Drive proactive, transparent engagement with cross-functional partners to co-create solutions, align on organizational priorities, and set clear expectations. Provide internal and business stakeholders with forward-looking visibility into key programs to inform milestones, prioritization, risk mitigation, and aligned decision-making.
• Pharma data-ecosystem analytics: Analyze data across disparate data sources (claims, EMR, Rx, activity, promotional, consumer, content) to develop insights that inform commercial business strategies.
• Advanced analytics and modelling: Leverage advanced statistical methods and ML/AI modelling with strong validation practices; deliver regression and time-series models, and segmentation/clustering approaches (k-means, hierarchical) to generate actionable insights.
• Innovation and GenAI experimentation: Contribute to and lead innovation experiments (idea generation, idea incubation, experimentation), including responsible application of GenAI and agentic AI. Identify tangible, measurable criteria to make meaningful improvements to business processes.

Primary skills (must-have)

• 8+ years in pharma/biotech across commercial analytics and strategy, with deep pharmaceutical commercialization experience and delivery of complex analytical initiatives.
• 4+ years leading high-performing teams; proven ability to coach talent, build an inclusive culture, and lead cross-functional pods in a matrixed setup.
• Strong consultative mindset with demonstrated ability to translate brand and commercial strategies into actionable analytics and insight plans.
• Executive presence with ability to influence senior leaders, align US Marketing & DHH stakeholders, and communicate clear, data-driven narratives.
• Extensive experience working with real-world datasets (claims, Rx, CRM, promotional and sales data), leveraging SQL, Python, and AI-driven tools; familiarity with modern data platforms including Snowflake, Databricks, and AWS/GCP.
• Experience leveraging advanced statistical methods, Machine Learning / AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) modelling and model evaluation, including segmentation & clustering (k-means, hierarchical).
• Self-motivated, proactive mindset, and ability to work independently.

Who we are:

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for:

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us-and start making your impact today.

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Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

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