Associate Director, Global Search & Evaluation (Beijing, Beijing, CN)
About this opportunity
Your impact begins here
As Associate Director, Search & Evaluation, you help Novo find and evaluate the next generation of treatments. You will act as our scientific eyes and ears in the region, scouting novel pipeline assets and enabling technologies across our therapy areas, then assessing how they fit our pipeline. Your judgement shapes which opportunities we pursue, helping bring promising science closer to people living with serious chronic diseases.
What you'll do
You will drive the technical side of business development, from strategy through to due diligence, while representing Novo externally across the region.
• Act as an external Novo representative in the region, attending partnering meetings and scientific conferences and building a strong professional network.
• Scout for and report novel pipeline assets and enabling technologies through professional networks, literature, databases and patent searches across all therapy areas in scope, including diabetes, obesity, CVD, liver, and rare blood and endocrine disorders.
• Understand internal and business development pipeline assets, clarifying what each therapy area needs and how new opportunities fit the existing pipeline.
• Evaluate opportunities by engaging closely with external stakeholders, particularly venture capital, biotech companies and other large-cap pharma.
• Drive the technical streams of the business development process, from strategy and target identification through initial evaluation to due diligence, working closely with colleagues inside and outside Global Business Development.
• Prepare presentations of selected opportunities for relevant governance boards and build the value story behind them.
• Represent Novo at external scientific congresses, symposia and Novo-sponsored events, and brand Novo as the preferred partner within relevant therapy areas.
What you'll bring
• A PhD's degree in business or life sciences, or a medical degree.
• At least 5 years' experience in R&D, consultancy, M&A, in-house corporate development, or an equivalent role.
• Proven project management skills and experience.
• The ability to analyse and digest complex ideas and data, and to make clear, qualified decisions and recommendations to stakeholders.
• Strong written and presentation communication skills.
• An outgoing approach, with strong networking, collaboration and stakeholder management skills.
• A self-driven, solution-focused and goal-oriented style that works well in a dynamic environment.
• Strategic business acumen, paired with a deep interest in and curiosity about life sciences and medicine.
Who you'll work with
You will join Global Business Development within Research & Development, where colleagues explore scientific ideas and advance them towards clinical testing.
Your closest partners will be colleagues across Global Business Development, alongside scientific, medical and commercial teams inside Novo. Externally, you will build relationships with venture capital, biotech companies and other large-cap pharma across the region. By bringing these perspectives together with clarity and pace, you help move the right opportunities forward.
What you can expect here
You will work at the forefront of scientific partnering, with the space to build a broad external network and shape decisions that influence our future pipeline. You will be trusted to take ownership, make your voice heard and grow your expertise through cross-functional and cross-value-chain collaboration. The work moves at pace, combining curiosity, collaboration
We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active BD&L & Strategic Planning role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 146 comparable Associate Director BD&L & Strategic Planning roles across 44 biopharma companies.
Salary context
44 of 146 peers report a salary range (USD, annualized)
Peers share this role's job function and a matching or adjacent seniority level -- not necessarily the same therapeutic area or country.
Where these roles are based
Top locations among the 146 comparable roles
+ 19 more countries
Seniority mix
146 of 146 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
15 of 146 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden
Similar opportunities
The closest matches from our peer group, ranked by how similar they are, not how well you'd qualify for them -- treat this as market context, not a guaranteed shortlist; a weak match is labeled as one below.
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How we calculate "similar"
No black box, no LLM guesswork: a deterministic score built from four normalized attributes. Here's this role's own peer group at different match levels, so you can see the mechanism, not just the result.
Every comparison starts from the same 100-point budget: 25 for working in the same function, 40 for the same therapeutic area, 20 for the same or adjacent seniority, 15 for the same country. A dimension we can't confirm on both sides contributes nothing, never a guess, never a free pass.
0 points, never a partial guess. A role we know almost nothing about beyond its function bottoms out at 25%; it never inflates to 100% just because there's little to compare against. Seniority uses a defined ladder (Associate → Manager → Associate Director → Senior → Principal → Director → Senior Director → Executive/VP) so "Director" and "Senior Director" count as adjacent, but "Director" and "Executive/VP" do not.