Iterative Health is a healthcare technology and services company powering the acceleration of clinical research to transform patient outcomes.
We built a leading performance-driven network of 100+ sites across the US, Europe, India, and Australia, conducting research directly in the communities where care is delivered across gastrointestinal, hepatology, obesity, and cardiology. By combining deep clinical trial expertise with cutting-edge AI, we connect sponsors' scientific ambitions with high-performing research teams that expedite and expand access to novel therapeutics for patients in need. Today, Iterative Health is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City with 250+ employees world-wide.
As Director, Strategy & Operations (Site Performance) at Iterative Health, you will lead the strategy, performance, and continuous improvement of our centralized site support services while driving activation and randomization performance across our cardiology network.
Serving as the operational owner of our centralized site solutions—including pre-screening, regulatory support, and eSource—you will partner cross-functionally to optimize workflows, scale capabilities, and improve site and sponsor outcomes. This is a role for someone who wants to own a P&L-scale problem with real stakes, not simply oversee a function. You'll leverage data to identify performance gaps, implement scalable solutions, and drive operational excellence across a complex clinical research environment. You will own the strategic solutions roadmap for our sites and own the pull through cross-functionally with our site-facing staff to ensure our sites have the capabilities, processes, infrastructure, and technology to meet our performance targets.
This role is ideal for a strategic, data-driven leader who thrives on solving complex problems, building high-performing teams, and creating systems that deliver measurable business impact. If you've spent years building frameworks for other people's businesses in consulting, or running ops at a startup where you had to build the plane while flying it, this is where that skill set gets applied to a mission that matters: accelerating clinical trials that bring new treatments to patients faster.
Where You’ll Drive Impact
Network Performance and Strategy Ownership
- Own activation and randomization performance across IH's cardiology site network as the single accountable leader.
- Build and run the performance monitoring system that catches trends and risks before they escalate and become problems.Identify and understand the key levers that drive enrollment performance and ensure they are being optimized consistently and systematically across the network.
- Diagnosing root causes when performance dips, and being the driving force to develop a clear plan of action and fix the issue through resolution
- Own roadmap for how to continually improve and measure site solutions impact and partner cross-functionally, including with Product to improve our solutions offerings to our sites.
Operating Model Ownership
- Serve as the accountable owner for IH's cardiology central research support services, including regulatory support, pre-screening, and eSource.
- Own the design, execution, and continuous improvement of the operating model for each service, treating them as products with clear performance standards and measurable outcomes.
- Define and track service-level KPIs for each function; use performance data to surface improvement opportunities and raise the quality bar.
- Develop scalable workflows and best practices that can be deployed consistently across the network.
- Serve as the connective tissue between site-level performance trends and central service teams, ensuring the right resources are allocated where they will have the greatest impact.
- Collect and synthesize site feedback to inform service improvements and partner with cross-functional teams to implement solutions.
Team Leadership & Development
- Directly manage and develop a multidisciplinary team of clinical research specialists, eSource specialists, pre-screeners, and regulatory specialists.
- Set clear goals and performance expectations for each function; provide ongoing coaching and development and foster a high-performance team culture.
- Ensure each team is properly resourced, trained, and equipped to deliver services at the standard required to drive strong site outcomes.
- Performs related job duties
How We Work
- Collaborative and low-ego team environment
- Fast-moving and highly iterative culture
- Strong focus on ownership and accountability
- Mission-driven and patient-centered mindset
- Open communication and continuous learning
- Comfortable navigating evolving business needs
What You Bring to the Team
- BA/BS required; MBA or other advanced degree a plus.
- 10+ years of experience in management consulting, a high-growth startup operating role, or a similarly demanding strategic/operational environment.
- Demonstrated ability to structure ambiguous problems, build frameworks from scratch, and translate analysis into a concrete operating plan.
- Strong quantitative fluency — comfortable building and interrogating performance dashboards and using data to diagnose root causes and drive decisions.
- Experience designing or overhauling operating models, processes, or service delivery functions, ideally in a fast-paced or scaling environment.
- Proven people management experience with a track record of leading, developing, and holding accountable a multidisciplinary team.
- Ability to manage multiple priorities, meet deadlines, and operate effectively in a fast-paced, evolving environment with limited precedent.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience at a top-tier management consulting firm, or as an early operator or generalist at a startup (e.g., Chief of Staff, Head of Operations, BizOps).
- Prior exposure to healthcare, life sciences, or clinical research — a plus but not required.
- Experience owning a P&L, KPI set, or operational performance metric at a program or network level.
- Demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into new domains without deep subject-matter expertise on day one.
At Iterative Health, we’re actively working towards creating an environment that is representative of the diversity of patients our technology serves. We are focused on building an equitable and inclusive culture, and by extension, hiring process. If you require any accommodations to make the application process or interviewing experience more accessible to you, please contact CandidateAccommodations@iterative.health.
