Sr. Director, Global Scientific Communications Excellence –
BioPharmaceuticals Medical (BPM)
Location: Mississauga, Canada
At AstraZeneca, we put patients first and strive to meet their unmet needs worldwide. Working here means being entrepreneurial, thinking big and working together to make the impossible a reality. If you are swift to action, confident to lead, willing to collaborate, and curious about what science can do, then you’re our kind of person.
Recognizing the importance of individualized flexibility, our ways of working allow employees to balance personal and work commitments while ensuring we continue to create a strong culture of collaboration and teamwork by engaging face-to-face in our offices 3 days a week. Our head office is purposely designed with collaboration in mind, providing space where teams can come together to strategize, brainstorm and connect on key projects.
Our dedication to sustainability is also central to our culture and part of what makes AstraZeneca a great place to work. We know the health of people, the planet and our business are interconnected which is why we’re taking ambitious action to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time, from climate change to access to healthcare and disease prevention.
The Sr. Director, Global Scientific Communications Excellence –
BioPharmaceuticals Medical (BPM) will drive the strategy, operating model, governance, and capability build required to modernize how medical content is planned, developed, reused, approved, and delivered across global and local medical teams. The role sets the standard for medical content reuse within BBU Medical — building repeatable, modular approaches that global and local teams can adopt and scale. It builds the foundation for scale by integrating medical content excellence, modular authoring, strong governance, omnichannel enablement, and AI-supported workflows — in close partnership with global and local medical teams, Global Business Services (GBS), Enterprise AI, IT, and Compliance.
Key Accountabilities
Strategic Leadership and Scientific Communications Excellence
- Define and lead the BPM scientific communications excellence strategy across therapeutic areas, portfolios, and priority markets, aligned with broader BPM medical strategy.
- Establish a clear vision for how strategic medical content is developed, governed, and activated to improve scientific engagement, field effectiveness, and content reuse across global and local medical teams.
- Lead frameworks for scientific narrative creation, integrated scientific communications planning, and core medical content design that ensure consistency, quality, and strategic pull-through.
Content Operating Model, Governance, and Process Excellence
- Design and implement the end-to-end medical content operating model — planning, authoring, review, approval, publication/distribution, localization, maintenance, and retirement.
- Establish governance frameworks, decision rights, RACIs, service expectations, and quality standards across all stakeholders involved in medical content development and deployment.
- Standardize content development through templates, playbooks, modular content standards, taxonomy, and reuse principles to improve quality, consistency, and speed to market.
Global Business Services (GBS) Partnership and Delivery Model
- Co-develop the GBS delivery model for scientific communications as a shared responsibility with TA-aligned Scientific Communications Sr. Directors, defining a consistent, enterprise-aligned approach to sourcing, service design, and ways of working.
- Build scalable onshore–offshore authoring and operations models that make effective use of GBS scientific and non-scientific writing talent based in offshore locations.
- Define service levels, quality expectations, intake and demand management, and escalation paths for GBS-delivered content, ensuring standards are applied consistently across therapeutic areas.
- Partner with GBS to build capability, training, and career pathways for offshore writing teams, embedding modular authoring and AI-enabled ways of working.
Digital, Data, and AI Enablement
- Lead the requirements for scientific communications platforms and capabilities — modular/component authoring, digital asset management, workflow orchestration, analytics, content reuse, and connected ecosystem integrations.
- Translate medical business needs into clear requirements for digital, AI, and technology teams.
- Champion responsible adoption of AI-enabled capabilities across content planning, drafting, tagging, review support, localization, reuse, and performance insight generation — with human oversight, scientific accuracy, and fair balance safeguarded in line with governance and compliance requirements.
Performance, Value Realization, and Continuous Improvement
- Define KPIs that measure medical content quality, effectiveness, speed, reuse, operational efficiency, adoption, and business value.
- Use insights and analytics to continuously improve content strategy, workflow design, channel relevance, and user experience for internal and external medical stakeholders.
- Demonstrate the value of transformation through measurable outcomes — cycle time reduction, increased reuse, improved quality and user satisfaction, better field enablement, and stronger return on content investment.
- Drive a culture of continuous improvement, simplification, and disciplined execution across the scientific communications ecosystem.
Leadership, Influence, and Change Management
- Build organizational capability in scientific narrative development, content strategy, modular content design, digital fluency, and AI-enabled ways of working.
- Influence cross-functional stakeholders on new ways of working to drive adoption.
- Serve as an enterprise thought partner, bringing external best practices and innovation into the organization to continuously elevate scientific communications and medical content transformation.
Requirements
- Experience in scientific communications: 10+ years in medical/scientific communications, with demonstrated expertise in Medical Affairs content, scientific narrative development, and medical content development across therapeutic areas.
- Education: Advanced scientific degree (PharmD, PhD, MD, or MS) required or strongly preferred.
- Strategic transformation and operating model leadership: Experience leading strategic transformation, content operating model development, content operations, governance design, and modular authoring standards across complex global organizations and markets.
- Matrix leadership and stakeholder influence: Proven ability to lead through influence rather than authority in a matrix environment, driving cross-functional alignment, stakeholder engagement, organizational change, and effective decision-making across diverse teams.
- Global delivery and GBS/shared-services model: Experience designing and operating onshore–offshore delivery models — including shared services, hub, or GBS partnerships and external agency/vendor networks — to scale content development across global and local teams.
- Digital, data, and AI capability leadership: Experience translating business needs into requirements for digital, data, AI/GenAI/NLP, and content technology teams, with demonstrated success steering specialized data scientists and engineers and delivering enterprise digital solutions at scale in life sciences or medical contexts.
- Content technology expertise: Experience with modular content, component authoring, headless content models, and/or digital asset management platforms, with familiarity applying these capabilities in regulated content environments.
- Regulatory and governance knowledge: Strong understanding of regulatory, compliance, and medical governance requirements relevant to scientific and medical content.
- Business and change leadership: Track record of leading cross-functional teams, managing budgets and resources, and translating digital or technical concepts into clear business language for non-technical stakeholders.
- Medical engagement and delivery experience: Experience supporting omnichannel medical engagement and content reuse across global and local teams.
- Preferred: Prior communications agency experience.
Where can I find out more?
AstraZeneca is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion and providing a workplace that is free from discrimination. AstraZeneca is committed to accommodating persons with disabilities. Such accommodation is available on request in respect of all aspects of the recruitment, assessment and selection process and may be requested by emailing AZCHumanResources@astrazeneca.com.
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