Director, Project Management

Brief team/department description:

Azurity develops unique, accessible, and high-quality medications, to serve overlooked patients. This role is with Azurity R&D project management team, which coordinates cross-functional planning, development and tracking of project plans, considering time, cost, quality and strategy. As we grow and expand, we are building new capabilities to make our processes simpler, faster, and more efficient. We are looking for a dynamic, change-inspired leader, to lead R&D project management, and process improvement initiatives.

This role will report to the R&D head and act as an internal consultant operating from Azurity’s Hyderabad development center. The role holder provides input on resource (budget, headcount) strategy and support in setting the yearly product delivery KPI. This role will be responsible for managing the R&D Project Management department, defining, and implementing R&D Project Management processes. Holds the overall responsibility in the R&D PM team for ensuring Project Plans, Budgets, Timelines are tracked against baseline and updated as per the Program Management process. Ensure project plan alignment with portfolio and product lifecycle management (PLM) goals.

The role holder will lead cross-functional initiatives to enhance R&D productivity and streamline product development processes through targeted process improvements, tool evaluation, and vendor coordination. This role acts as the functional lead to ensure that technology-enabled solutions align closely with evolving R&D needs, leveraging a strong working knowledge of pharmaceutical R&D workflows, data and applicable concepts to effectively coordinate with external vendors, internal data science and digital teams. This role focuses on functional leadership and facilitation, responsible for working with the Chief Scientific Officer and science department heads to ensure streamlined processes are in place for meeting yearly KPIs, identifying process improvement & simplification opportunities.

The scope includes financial governance, reporting, resource planning, and process improvement. An ideal candidate will have experience with leading complex programs within the pharmaceutical development lifecycle, in addition to experience with CMO/CRO/lab operations. A deep understanding of project plans, budgeting / forecasting is a key attribute. This is a collaborative role involving significant engagement with cross-functional heads (such as Quality, finance, accounting, legal and IT), to drive programs and ensure adoption. This role will have the exciting and unique opportunity to drive Management System excellence and adoption within our growing Hyderabad organization. The ideal candidate will be a quick learner who can work in an extremely fast paced organization and pivot from one objective to the next quickly.

Principle Responsibilities:

1. A) Lead project management

• Enable preparation and management of CSO-R&D budget, yearly KPIs and project plans. Enable project managers to identify, document and manage critical path activities. Review project plans, challenge project schedule baseline and assumptions. Ensure project managers have defined all activities with appropriate timelines, costs, risks and mitigation plans aligned with the project stakeholders.

• Through the project managers, prepare month-on-month project forecasts and manage CSO-level variance between forecast vs. actual within thresholds. Facilitate budget decisions and deliverables throughout the yearly cycle. Support the R&D head and science department heads in articulating decisions required, risks and layout options at appropriate level of depth to enable decisions.

• Enable project plan updation in A3 templates for all projects. Support the Franchise Portfolio Management and finance leadership with timeline, and cost evaluations when requested. Responsible for project status reporting to R&D scientific leadership team (SLT), Strategic Portfolio Management and other project stakeholders as required. Maintain management information systems on budget, timelines, key risks, and decisions.
• Partner with the finance leadership and co-own the Long-Range Budget forecast, responsible for R&D opex, capex, and product-level development cost. Align science department leadership on the stage-wise Probability of Technical & Regulatory success.

1. B) Management systems & processes:

• Continuously improve the contract and purchase order (PO) management process for R&D, through a periodic review of SLA and goals with the legal and finance teams Facilitate regular and ad hoc project team meetings, ensuring documentation of agendas, minutes, and actions. Collaborate with cross-functional teams (internal/external) to track key performance indicators
• Develop/maintain collaboration and nurture relationships with internal partner functions and external entities as required, to support business and strategic goals. Serve as the point person for initial escalation, conflict resolution, project risk mitigation for issues that cannot be resolved in the Project Teams, requiring liaising with department leaders
• Oversight, mentoring, training of PM team members on policies and procedures
• Support R&D operational planning - Lab space management, capex & support internal preparedness for QA audits, leadership visits.
• Responsible for drafting the R&D sections in management presentations, working with the department heads and the Chief Scientific Officer.

1. C) Digital enablement initiatives:

• Lead a small team of PMs and manage the R&D digital budget, including annual subscriptions for off-the-shelf solutions as well as custom built solutions (external as well as in-house).
• Champion the evaluation of cutting-edge data tools and data-enabled solutions by working alongside internal digital, data science and technical teams to ensure deliverables meeting R&D’s strategic goals
• Lead end-to-end digital transformations from vendor selection to rollout, engaging with IT, cross functional teams and external vendors. Wherever optimal, lead in-house workflow creation and execution through the IT team.
• Serve as the internal business owner to the Azurity IT team, on R&D / laboratory systems such as E-Lab Notebook, Document mgmt. system. Drive functional oversight on integration projects involving lab systems, ensuring alignment with R&D workflows
• Build and manage vendor relationships through screening, onboarding and on-premises engagements. Define and monitor service expectations from external vendors via functionally aligned SLAs based on R&D user needs. Provide continuous feedback to vendors to ensure tools evolve with R&D processes, without taking direct ownership of the digital systems

 Qualifications/Educational Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Pharmacy, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Life Sciences, Chemistry, Biotechnology, Engineering, or a related scientific discipline.
• Master's degree preferred:

• MBA (Strategy, Operations, General Management, or Finance)
• MS/M.Pharm in a relevant scientific field

• Certifications (preferred, not mandatory)

• PMP
• PgMP
• Lean Six Sigma Green Belt/Black Belt

 Preferred Experience:

15-20 years of pharmaceutical industry experience, including:

Project and Portfolio Management

• At least 7-10 years managing cross-functional development programs.
• Experience with R&D portfolios rather than isolated projects.
• Experience leading governance meetings and stage-gate reviews.

Budget Management

• Ownership or co-ownership of departmental budgets.
• Experience reviewing forecasts prepared by analysts or PMs.
• Experience presenting budget updates to senior leadership.

Process and Organizational Change

• Designing new departmental processes.
• Simplifying complex workflows.
• Implementing systems such as Veeva, TrackWise, Planisware, Smartsheet, Clarity, Microsoft Project, etc.
• Creating governance models and decision-making frameworks.
• Driving organizational adoption of new ways of working.