JD: Vice President, Life Sciences Commercial Solutions

• Define and continuously sharpen Saama’’s commercial analytics and AI portfolio - what Solutions we build, what we deliver as services, and where we partner.

• Translate pharma commercial business problems into repeatable offerings, accelerators, and reference architectures rather than one-off custom builds.

• Set the AI agenda for the practice: agentic workflows, LLM/RAG-based solutions, and ML applied to field force effectiveness, market access, omnichannel engagement, patient services, and commercial data foundations.

• Own the offering roadmap in partnership with Product, Engineering, and Data Science, including build-vs-buy calls, pricing and packaging constructs, and the business case for each investment.

• Maintain a differentiated point of view on the competitive set - the large SIs, the specialist analytics firms, and the data and platform vendors - and position Saama credibly against them.

1. Revenue growth with the sales organization

• Partner with account executives and client partners as the domain and solution lead on enterprise pursuits: shaping opportunities, running discovery, designing the solution, building the pricing model, and defending the approach with the client.

• Lead responses to RFPs, RFIs, and unsolicited proposals; own the technical and domain narrative in orals and final presentations.

• Build and hold senior client relationships independently - Commercial Operations, Commercial IT/Digital, Market Access, Brand, Patient Services, and Data & Analytics leadership.

• Carry accountability for bookings and revenue targets for the Commercial portfolio; expand existing accounts and open new logos across large pharma, mid-cap biopharma, and emerging biotech.

• Support analyst and market-facing positioning (Everest Group, ISG, HFS and similar), conference presence, and thought leadership that generates qualified demand.

1. Consultative delivery leadership

• Serve as the senior domain leader on delivery - not a figurehead. You will be in working sessions, reviewing solution designs, resolving escalations, and making judgment calls where the domain and the data are ambiguous.

• Own delivery quality, client satisfaction, compliance and referenceability across the commercial portfolio.

• Ensure solutions actually land: adoption, change management, and measurable business impact for the client, not just deployed technology.

• Structure engagements for scalability - reusable assets, onshore/offshore delivery models, and margin discipline.

1. Practice leadership

• Build, mentor, and retain a multi-disciplinary team of consultants, solution architects, domain SMEs, and analytics leaders across US and global delivery centers.

• Establish the operating cadence - pipeline reviews, capacity planning, capability development, and hiring plans - required to scale the business predictably.

• 15+ years in consulting and delivery within life sciences, with a majority focused on pharmaceutical/biotech commercial functions. Practice leader, principal, partner, or business unit leader experience at a consultancy, SI, analytics firm, or life sciences software company.

• Deep, demonstrable subject-matter expertise across a meaningful span of the commercial spectrum. Strong candidates typically have real depth in several of:

• Sales force operations - incentive compensation design and administration, goal setting, alignment, call planning, sales reporting, field analytics

• Market access and managed care - rebate analytics, formulary strategy, GPO/IDN contracting, payer analytics, pull-through programs

• Marketing and omnichannel - brand analytics, HCP targeting, campaign measurement, EHR/eRx programs, MLR workflow

• Patient services and hub operations - support program design, hub and specialty pharmacy analytics, adherence

• Commercial data platforms - IQVIA, Symphony/ICON, Komodo, claims and specialty pharmacy data, CRM/CLM, MDM, data governance, and transparency/compliance reporting (Sunshine Act / Open Payments)

• A track record of selling: personally led or materially drove multi-million-dollar engagements to close, including pre-sales solutioning, pricing, and executive-level negotiation. You can point to specific deals and your role in them.

• Experience leading delivery organizations at meaningful scale - 40+ practitioners, distributed teams, multiple concurrent Fortune 500 clients.

• Applied fluency in modern AI and analytics: LLMs, RAG, agentic patterns, and the practical realities of deploying them in a regulated, validated pharma environment. You should be able to challenge a solution architecture, not just approve a slide about one.

• Executive presence with the ability to hold a room of pharma senior leaders and be recognized as a peer.

• Bachelor’’s degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.

Preferred

• Prior P&L ownership for a practice, business unit, or offering portfolio.

• Experience building a commercial practice inside an organization whose center of gravity was elsewhere - clinical, R&D, or technology.

• Published thought leadership, analyst panel participation, or recognized industry speaking in commercial pharma forums (PMSA, CBI, Fierce Pharma, peer-reviewed journals).

• Experience across therapeutic areas with distinct commercial models - oncology, rare disease, specialty, CNS, immunology.

Saama is an AI and advanced analytics company built for life sciences. Best known for the AI-powered clinical platform that supported the trial behind the world’’s first COVID-19 vaccine, Saama works with many of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and a large base of emerging biotechs. Alongside our clinical development portfolio, we operate a growing Commercial business - spanning commercial data platforms, master data management, advanced BI, and our Analytics for Commercial Excellence (ACE) solution family - serving marketing, sales, market access, and patient services organizations.