Merck KGaA Posted August 30, 2026

Senior Director - Group Portfolio Execution Lead, Integration & Carve-Out (all genders)

Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany FULL_TIME
BD&L & Strategic Planning Senior Director
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About this opportunity

Your Role

As Senior Director – Group Portfolio Execution Lead (Integration & Carve-Out), you will own the end-to-end execution of our large-scale strategic integration and carve-out programs. In this role, you will shape organizational performance while managing complex projects with high risk and global reach.

Reporting to the Head of Group Portfolio Execution, you will join a highly energetic, mission-driven team of experienced integration and carve-out leaders delivering strategic initiatives across our three sectors.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-end program ownership: Own and lead assigned integration and/or carve-out projects and programs end-to-end, serving as the primary point of contact with full accountability across all workstreams.

Due diligence and scope definition:

Represent integration interests during due diligence.

Define and document deal scope (including separation/integration boundaries, deliverables, milestones, and dependencies).

Execution strategy and governance: Design, drive, and monitor a structured, disciplined implementation strategy, from project set-up and timeline planning through milestone delivery, dynamically adapting and recalibrating plans as the situation evolves.

Stakeholder leadership and alignment: Build trusted partnerships and engage internal and external stakeholders, including senior leaders and key decision-makers; maintain alignment and drive timely decisions.

Cross-functional mobilization: Mobilize and coordinate cross-functional team members; provide clear direction and oversight for accountabilities and assignments.

Operating model & organizational design:

Drive creation and sign-off of the future (target) operating model.

For carve-outs, drive creation and sign-off of the future (functional) operating model, legal entity structure, and pre-structuring.

Ensure people and organizational aspects (culture, org design, retention and engagement, capability identification and preservation) are appropriately considered and managed.

Country-level delivery:

Ensure smooth integration delivery at country level.

Drive execution of country separation cross-functionally for carve-outs.

Risk, compliance, and decision-making: Drive fast decision-making by proactively identifying and resolving risks and pivoting course decisively to protect deal success. Ensure full compliance with legal and regulatory requirements throughout the transaction lifecycle, safeguarding our organizational and financial interests.

Financial stewardship: Plan and manage overall integration/separation cost budgets.

Post-closing agreements and service delivery:

For carve-outs: Lead end-to-end definition, implementation, and delivery of post-closing services, including Manufacturing Supply Agreements (MSAs) and Transitional Service Agreements (TSAs).

For integrations: Lead and manage post-closing agreement exits in a fast and cost-effective way.

Value realization and performance tracking: Understand and communicate concerns, motivations, and needs of all entities to ensure maximum benefit is realized and business momentum is maintained/increased. Track and report performance against milestones, deliverables, and synergy/value-creation targets (including top- and bottom-line synergies where applicable).

Communication and escalation: Maintain a structured approach for keeping stakeholders informed, reporting progress against financial and non-financial targets, surfacing roadblocks, and driving timely escalation to senior leadership.

Handover and sustainability: Create a clear roadmap and transition plan for handover and ongoing ownership.

Team leadership and capability building: Lead, mentor, and support a high-performing project team, fostering collaboration, professional growth, and knowledge sharing. Continuously evolve integration/carve-out execution best practices and contribute to best-practice building across the company

Who You Are

Master’s degree (e.g., Business Administration, Economics, Finance, or related fields), MBA is preferred

10+ years of experience in global, matrixed organizations.

8+ years of experience in management consulting or similar roles, with demonstrated success steering large cross-functional teams and overseeing substantial resources in complex environments.

8+ years leading operational post-merger integrations and/or carve-out executions/business separations across deal types (e.g., share deals, asset deals, IPOs/spin-offs, standalone/incubator integrations, partial integrations), with a proven track record in high-stakes environments.

Proficient financial literacy and experience in financial due diligence, valuation, and the M&A lifecycle.

Broad-based knowledge and project experience in our relevant industries (Life Science, Healthcare, and/or Electronics) with curiosity about technologies shaping our company´s future.

Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, underpinned by systems thinking and attention to detail.

Skilled at communication and building credibility and networks, from working teams to C-suite, internally and with external partners.

Strong business acumen: deep understanding of business processes and operating models; knowledge of financial analysis, ROI analysis, and key performance indicators.

Continuous learning orientation; ability to quickly acquire new skills and domain knowledge in evolving business contexts.

Strong AI literacy or interest in AI, including critical thinking and experience with AI tools, concepts, and prompt engineering to accelerate project execution and knowledge management.

The position can be located in Germany or the US

Role Level: Project Manager 5

Department: EF-MA Group Strategy, M&A and Venturing

Job details

Seniority
Senior Director
Function
BD&L & Strategic Planning
Therapeutic area
Not listed
Location
Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany
Employment type
FULL_TIME

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 50 comparable Senior Director BD&L & Strategic Planning roles across 24 biopharma companies.

50Comparable roles tracked
38Currently active
24Companies hiring similar roles
10Countries represented

Salary context

16 of 50 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 Not listed on this posting
Lowest disclosed · Director Global Strategic Projects · Merck KGaA $165,100/yr – $247,700/yr
Peer group range $206,400 – $380,750 (median $254,050)

Where these roles are based

Top locations among the 50 comparable roles

United States27
China9
Germany4
Switzerland3
United Kingdom2
Israel1

+ 4 more countries

Seniority mix

50 of 50 peers have a known seniority level

Director41
Executive/VP5
Senior Director4

Therapeutic area mix

13 of 50 peers have a known therapeutic area; the rest are genuinely unlabeled, not hidden

Immunology5
Oncology4
Neuroscience3
Cardiovascular / CVRM1

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.

50%similar
Regeneron GmbH Munich, Germany Director
Same function Adjacent seniority Same country
50%similar
Sandoz Holzkirchen (Sandoz International GmbH), Germany Director
Same function Adjacent seniority Same country
50%similar
Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany Director
Same function Adjacent seniority Same country
50%similar
Sandoz Holzkirchen (Sandoz International GmbH), Germany Director
Same function Adjacent seniority Same country
45%similar
Shenzhen Sanofi Biological Products Co., Ltd. Beijing, China Senior Director
Same function Same seniority
45%similar
Gilead Sciences, Inc. Foster City, United States Senior Director
Same function Same seniority

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.

50%
Director International Commercialization Immunology (f/m/d)
Regeneron GmbH · Munich, Germany · Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
50%
Director Global Alliance Management (m/f/d)
Sandoz · Holzkirchen (Sandoz International GmbH), Germany · Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
45%
Senior Director Corporate Development, Search and Evaluation
Gilead Sciences Shanghai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. · Shanghai, China · Senior Director
Function Therapeutic area Seniority Country
35%
Director, Search & Evaluation (Platforms & AI)
Novartis · Cambridge (USA), United States · Director
Function Therapeutic area Adjacent seniority Country
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.