Associate Director, Digital Process & Data Analysis

Job Description

The Associate Director, Digital Process & Data Analysis (DPDA) provides strategic leadership for the organization's digital reporting, analytics, and process optimization capabilities. This role partners across business and technical teams to define priorities, lead the end-to-end delivery of reporting solutions, and drive the integration of purpose-built applications, analytics, and AI-enabled tools. The Associate Director champions data-driven decision-making, establishes governance and best practices, and fosters user adoption through stakeholder engagement, communications, and capability-building initiatives that maximize business value and operational effectiveness.

Responsibilities:

Solution delivery and product / data support:

• Drive clinical/operational reporting plans across products, roles, and geographies; implement standards and adoption tactics for purpose-built apps, self-service analytics, and other products in partnership with stakeholders.
• Engage with business stakeholders to understand and document their needs and help translate them into clear requirements and technical deliverables
• Lead delivery governance for key solutions-own requirements definition, data readiness coordination, development oversight, testing, release, and maintenance-to ensure scalable outcomes and strong user adoption.
• Produce executive-ready insights by consolidating trends, risks, and opportunities across portfolios; deliver clear narratives and visualizations that inform strategic decisions and prioritization.
• Run intake and prioritization process for ad hoc analytics; ensure timely, accurate responses and convert recurring requests into reusable assets or self-service capabilities.
• Coordinate participation in industry benchmarking; translate findings into practical performance targets and recommendations for process or investment adjustments.
• Align refresh schedules and data source management to business priorities; monitor usage and reliability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs); communicate changes and incidents broadly, coordinate cross-team resolution, and drive preventive improvements.

Process, compliance, & capability building:

• Strengthen team capability and consistency: establish and enforce documentation and development standards, mentor specialists/senior specialists, and model effective stakeholder engagement.
• Review quality trends across teams; assign ownership for systemic issues with remediation timelines; ensure validation practices are embedded in delivery processes.
• Champion continuous improvement: evaluate emerging technologies and reporting methods, pilot high potential approaches, and institutionalize practices that reduce time-to-insight and increase impact.
• Oversee process documentation & completeness associated with archiving & decommissioning processes
• Own documentation governance for the domain, ensuring a single source of truth linked to release processes; audit adherence, resolve inconsistencies, and mandate updates after changes
• Oversee access policies, workspace structures, and permission models in partnership with technical owners.

Technical skills:

• Business intelligence (BI) reporting and visualization tools: Experience in setting domain-wide standards for dashboard usability, consistency, and adoption across platforms (e.g., Qlik Sense, Power BI, ThoughtSpot, Tableau).
• Data literacy: Deep understanding of data literacy best practices, including defining storytelling guidelines, executive readout formats, and review cadences.
• Data preparation and quality checks: Understanding requirements to establish a governance model for light wrangling and validation including reconciliation patterns, tolerance thresholds, User Acceptance Testing (UAT) signoff criteria, and escalation paths.
• Spreadsheet and tabular proficiency: Understanding best practices related to standardization of templates, checklists, and controls for spreadsheet-based analysis and QA to reduce variability and error rates.
• Strong working knowledge of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
• Advanced knowledge of Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and clinical trial operations
• Strong understanding of database concepts, data quality, lineage, and governance
• Understanding of best practices related to standing up technical enablement and change management programs.
• Understanding of analytics/programming concepts and ability to collaborate with technical partners to validate data and prototype solutions
• Ability to connect business outcomes to technical deliverables

Soft skills:

• Ability to communicate strategically across technical and business stakeholders by tailoring / shaping narratives, visuals, and depth to influence understanding and alignment; able to translate technical concepts into plain language
• Demonstrate strong ownership and initiative, ability to set direction for ambiguous workstreams, empower others while providing clear guidance and timely checkpoints
• Ability to elicit and document business needs and translate them into requirements, user stories, or solution concepts
• Ability to anticipate complex risks and interdependencies and frame options with trade-offs, recommendations, and decision implications
• Proficient in shaping effective cross functional collaboration to drive alignment and accountability across teams and ensure commitments are met
• Advanced ability to balance competing priorities across broader contexts, adjust focus and sequence to account for urgency, impact, capacity, and timing
• Ability to foster a culture of feedback and continuous improvement
• Ability to sustain organizational trust through consistent execution, transparent communication, and concise updates across complex situations; able to model high-quality standards
• Ability to engage vendors, leadership, and industry forums; represent team professionally and credibly under pressure; maintain resilience and composure

Enterprise Leadership Skills:

• Innovation | Apply creative courage, proactively confront difficult issues, be willing to offer creative alternatives and recommend improvements based on business challenges; able to challenge status quo and handle pushback
• Strategic Planning | Guide team success; use appropriate methods and a flexible interpersonal style to build and guide cohesive team to complete shared goals; prioritize and plan; establish an action plan with clear timelines and resources; orchestrate complex work and align multiple stakeholders
• Influence | Provide expertise across multiple areas and lead project teams without formal authority; persuade others to adopt improvements and align around project approaches and priorities

Qualifications & experience:

• Non-Degree or associate's degree (in Computer Science, Statistics, Pharmacy, Nursing, Biological Sciences, or a health care-related discipline) AND 10+ years of experience working in relevant field for associated job description (see below) -OR-
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Statistics, Pharmacy, Nursing, Biological Sciences, or a health care-related discipline AND 8+ years of experience working in relevant field for associated job description (see below) -OR-
• Advanced Degree (Masters or Doctorate) in Computer Science, Statistics, Pharmacy, Nursing, Biological Sciences, or a health care-related discipline AND 4+ years of experience working in relevant field for associated job description (see below)

Example relevant experience:

• Significant responsibility in clinical operations; deep experience in one or more clinical operations areas preferred
• Candidates with strong healthcare/analytics/operations leadership or training/enablement backgrounds will be considered
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional initiatives; facilitates alignment across stakeholders; manages dependencies and risks
• Experience in applying clinical operations knowledge and/or technical analytics expertise to identify business needs and support the delivery of data, reporting, or digital solutions
• Experience designing and delivering training programs; builds enablement materials and operating guides to scale processes and data literacy across teams
• People leadership experience preferred: coaching, feedback, and developing talent; or demonstrated leadership through mentoring and matrixed teams
• Track record of process improvement and change management

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Required Skills:

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Where required by law, the compensation range for this role is provided below.

The salary range for the primary location of this role is:

This range reflects the Company's reasonable expectation of the base salary applicable to this role at the time of posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs. The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

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