Merck Posted September 24, 2026

Director, Global Marketing Alliance Portfolio Lead

Rahway, New Jersey, United States of America FULL_TIME
Marketing Director
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Merck is the source of truth for this posting and owns the application process. We surface normalized context and market comparison you won't find on the original listing.

About this opportunity

Job Description

We are recruiting for a Global Marketing Director, Alliance Portfolio Lead.

This role provides support across oncology alliance governance, business operations, and portfolio integration activities. The position is responsible for ensuring alliance operating models, governance processes, and partnership obligations translate into effective business execution while enabling alignment between alliance ways of working and broader portfolio priorities.

The role serves as a strategic connector between internal stakeholders and alliance stakeholders, ensuring decisions are made efficiently, commitments are executed effectively, and alliance capabilities evolve to support changing business needs. The individual will operate across multiple cross-functional teams and partner organizations to drive alignment, manage complexity, and facilitate execution against shared objectives.

The individual in this role will create trusted relationships with:

Internal alliance team members, including senior leadership.

Cross-functional partners across Commercial, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Alliance Management, and other relevant functions.

Regional and market stakeholders.

External alliance partners and governance committee representatives.

The individual will:

Support the alliance business operations framework, including planning cycles, operating cadence, milestones, deliverables, execution tracking, and ongoing operational governance across alliance organizations.

Lead preparation and execution support for governance committees and decision-making forums, including agenda development, decision readiness assessment, issue management, escalation tracking, and follow-through on agreed actions.

Ensure alliance activities operate in accordance with contractual obligations, governance structures, decision rights, operating procedures, and compliance requirements while partnering appropriately with Legal, Compliance, Finance, and Alliance Management stakeholders.

Serve as a central point of coordination across internal and external stakeholders to facilitate alignment, transparency, and informed decision-making.

Lead coordination of alliance-related portfolio lifecycle management activities and facilitate integration of relevant portfolio processes into alliance ways of working.

Drive alignment of marketing operations approaches, processes, tools, and technologies across alliance environments where appropriate and supported by governance structures.

Facilitate integration of partnered promotional assets and portfolio content into broader portfolio planning and execution processes.

Identify, surface, and help resolve cross-company alignment issues related to priorities, timelines, resources, assumptions, dependencies, and execution risks

Key Capabilities

Strategic thinking and business acumen.

Executive-level communication and influencing skills.

Alliance, partnership, or complex stakeholder-management experience.

Strong governance and decision-management capabilities.

Organizational leadership in matrix and shared-authority environments.

Negotiation, conflict resolution, and alignment-building skills.

Ability to manage ambiguity and lead through organizational complexity.

Strong analytical, planning, and problem-solving abilities.

Ability to connect strategic priorities with operational execution

Education Minimum Requirement

Minimum BA/BS degree.

Advanced degree (MBA or Master's degree) preferred.

Required Experience and Skills

Minimum of seven (7) years Pharmaceutical Business experience

Experience leading cross-functional initiatives within complex healthcare, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or comparable environments.

Demonstrated success influencing outcomes across organizations without direct authority.

Experience working with senior stakeholders and executive governance bodies.

Strong relationship management, communication, and negotiation capabilities.

Experience translating strategic priorities into operational plans and measurable outcomes.

Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity and organizational complexity.

Preferred Experience and Skills

Alliance or strategic partnership experience.

Minimum of (2) years of Oncology experience.

Global or regional business experience.

Experience supporting governance committees and cross-company operating models.

Familiarity with lifecycle management processes, portfolio planning, or commercial operations.

Understanding of forecasting, business performance management, and strategic planning processes.

Required Skills:

Business Alignment, Business Alignment, Business Decisions, Business Development Initiatives, Collaborative Leadership, Direct Marketing, Executive Leadership, Executive Presence, Financial Acumen, Launch Readiness, Managing Ambiguity, Market Assessments, Market Development, Market Research, Oncology Marketing, Organizational Leadership, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), Planning Ability, Product Launch Support, Product Management, Product Positioning, Progress Monitoring, Relationship Management, Results-Oriented, Stakeholder Management {+ 6 more}

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.  As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.  For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

EEOC Know Your Rights

EEOC GINA Supplement​

We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

Learn more about your rights, including under California, Colorado and other US State Acts

The salary range for this role is

$190,800.00 - $300,300.00

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this 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 .

You can apply for this role through https://jobs.merck.com/us/en (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

San Francisco Residents Only:  We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only:  We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 

Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

25%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

N/A

Job Posting End Date:

10/7/2026 *A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE  the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.

Requisition ID:R417523

Job details

Seniority
Director
Function
Marketing
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Rahway, New Jersey, United States of America
Employment type
FULL_TIME

How this role compares

Computed from every other active Marketing role in our database, not just this employer's listings.

We currently track 153 comparable Director Marketing roles across 43 biopharma companies.

153Comparable roles tracked
145Currently active
43Companies hiring similar roles
11Countries represented

Salary context

88 of 153 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.

This roleSubject $190,800/yr – $300,300/yr
Lowest disclosed · Product Director, Established Products Group · Johnson & Johnson $122,000/yr – $212,750/yr
Highest disclosed · Sr Director/Director, Neurology Patient Marketing (Remote, US) · Servier $251/hr – $307/hr (≈ $522,080–$638,560/yr)
Peer group range $167,375 – $580,320 (median $244,150)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 153 comparable roles

United States135
Japan3
India3
China2
Canada2
Switzerland2

+ 5 more countries

Seniority mix

153 of 153 peers have a known seniority level

Director114
Senior Director39

Therapeutic area mix

36 of 153 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Oncology18
Neuroscience7
Rare Disease5
Cardiovascular / CVRM2
Vaccines & Infectious Disease2
Dermatology & Aesthetics1
Immunology1

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.

60%similar
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Notify me about similar jobs

Get an email when we spot other openings like this one – same job function, comparable seniority, roles you'd actually want to see.

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.

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Unmatched or unknown dimensions score exactly the same: 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.