Associate Director Patient Centricity - Patient Centered Development Enablement

The Associate Director, Patient Centricity enables patient-centred practices across R&D by supporting the delivery of strategy, processes, tools and governance across Patient-Centred Development (PCD), Representation in Clinical Trials, Health Equity in Science and Bioethics.

Working globally in a matrix environment, the role partners with therapy areas (TAs) and enterprise functions to embed patient voice, generate and apply patient experience data, representativeness, health equity and ethical guardrails into development strategy, design and delivery.

The role helps scale consistent ways of working across the TAs by developing and evolving frameworks, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), templates, training and resources that support compliant, inspection-ready patient centered development.

The role will support with portfolio planning, milestone tracking, risk and issue management, metrics, tracking and reporting to demonstrate adoption, business value and continuous improvement. This will be achieved though coordination of cross-functional workstreams, vendors and external partners.

Role-specific accountabilities: Patient-Centred Development Enablement

• Partner with Patient Centricity, therapy area and cross-functional teams to implement the Patient-Centred Development framework, ensuring alignment with external expectations including regulators, HTA bodies and payers.

• Support disease-level patient experience summaries for programme teams, including delivery planning, creation of the summaries, impact measurement, stakeholder engagement and vendor coordination.

• Develop, maintain and promote tools, resources and training that enable effective and consistent adoption of the Patient-Centred Development framework across teams.

• Manage PCD activity trackers and related operational processes, ensuring alignment with relevant data systems and partnership with PCD Directors.

Education, qualifications, skills and experience

Essential

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in life sciences, health sciences, or a related discipline.

• Experience building infrastructure or managing processes, operating models, guidance, templates and training in a global matrix organisation.

• Demonstrated ability to work with cross-functional stakeholders including Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, Regulatory, and other potential external partners.

• Strong understanding of drug development, clinical trial design and delivery, and the role of patient voice and patient experience data in R&D decision-making.

• Strong project management skills, including planning, stakeholder management and delivery to time, quality and cost.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex requirements into practical, user-friendly guidance and executive-ready materials.

• High degree of judgement, integrity and comfort operating in new areas requiring compliance, ethics, external engagement and reputational sensitivity.

• High level of interest and curiosity for AI and its use in R&D.

• Experience with SPOL/SharePoint sites, digital intake tools, dashboards, metrics reporting, process simplification or AI-enabled workflow improvements.

• Experience across multiple therapy areas and/or global, regional and local operating models.

• Vendor, partnership or supplier management experience, including contracting, service-level management and continuous improvement.

Core capabilities / behaviours

• Patient-first and enterprise-minded: connects patient benefit, science, ethics and business value.

• Structured and pragmatic: turns ambiguity into clear processes and decisions.

• Collaborative: builds trust across functions and geographies.

• Compliance-aware: scales ways of working with appropriate guardrails.

• Data-driven communicator: uses evidence and insight to prioritise and improve.

• Change enabler: drives adoption through engagement, training and improvement.

Date Posted

20-jul-2026

Closing Date

06-ago-2026

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements.