Senior Director, Head of Study Start-Up
About this opportunity
We are seeking an experienced clinical development leader to head the Study Start-Up Unit and provide strategic direction, operational oversight, and expert leadership across study start-up activities for the clinical development portfolio.
In this role, you will help accelerate country and site activation, strengthen delivery performance, and advance the way clinical trials are planned and executed. You will work across Global Development Operations, R&D, and external partners to ensure that start-up strategies are efficient, risk-based, compliant, and focused on bringing medicines to patients faster.
Your key responsibilities
Lead the Study Start-Up Unit and set the strategic direction for clinical study start-up activities across the clinical portfolio.
Provide operational oversight based on quality, performance, and delivery trends, ensuring clear accountability and ownership across internal and external partners.
Drive data-informed planning of country and site start-up activities and promote consistent, high-quality execution across studies.
Identify, assess, mitigate, and communicate risks and emerging issues that may affect study timelines, quality, cost, or delivery.
Foster solution-oriented problem solving within the team and ensure timely escalation and resolution of functional or partner-related challenges.
Accelerate study start-up and site activation through process redesign, technology enablement, and continuous improvement.
Design and implement country and site start-up strategies that support strong recruitment performance and responsible return on R&D investment.
Ensure that agreements with institutions, healthcare professionals, and healthcare organizations related to clinical trials are negotiated and executed in line with applicable legal and compliance requirements.
Act as a senior point of escalation and a critical interface with contract research organizations and other external service providers.
Represent the Study Start-Up Unit in portfolio governance and provide oversight of quality, delivery, performance, and accountability.
Contribute to the Clinical Delivery & Patient Centricity leadership team by helping define and implement its vision and strategy.
Influence the future direction of clinical trial execution and sourcing models to support state-of-the-art performance across Phase I–IV studies.
Build strong networks across Global Development Operations, Global Regulatory Affairs, Clinical Trial Supplies, R&D Insights & Analytics, Patient Safety, Legal, Quality, Compliance, Finance, and other R&D functions.
Keep current with industry standards, emerging technologies, and innovative approaches relevant to clinical operations.
Lead organizational change effectively, integrating new roles, responsibilities, processes, and ways of working as the organization evolves.
Job requirements
Bachelor’s degree in life sciences, healthcare, clinical research, business, or a related discipline.
At least 10 years of relevant experience in clinical development, clinical operations, study start-up, clinical trial delivery, or a closely related field and At least 5 years’ experience in direct people leadership or equivalent.
Significant experience leading global study start-up activities across multiple therapeutic areas, and clinical trial phases.
Strong knowledge of country and site activation, clinical trial regulations, GCP, risk management, CRO oversight, performance management, and cross-functional clinical operations.
Preferred qualifications and experience
Experience leading a global Study Start-Up function, Center of Excellence, or comparable enterprise-level clinical operations organization.
Experience using predictive analytics, automation, artificial intelligence, clinical systems, or other technology-enabled approaches to improve country and site activation.
Patient-focused and committed to improving the speed, quality, and experience of clinical research.
Collaborative and inclusive, with the ability to build trust across functions, regions, and external partnerships.
Curious and improvement-oriented, with the ability to turn new ideas, data, and technologies into practical operational solutions.
Resilient and adaptable in a changing environment, with the ability to lead through ambiguity and organizational change.
Job details
How this role compares
Computed from every other active Clinical Research role in our database, not just this employer's listings.
We currently track 11 comparable Senior Director Clinical Research roles across 4 biopharma companies.
Salary context
10 of 11 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 11 comparable roles
Seniority mix
11 of 11 peers have a known seniority level
Therapeutic area mix
5 of 11 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.