R&D Operations Senior Manager

Job description

Career CategoryProject ManagementJob DescriptionJoin Amgen’s Mission of Serving PatientsAt Amgen, if you feel like you’re part of something bigger, it’s because you are. Our shared mission—to serve patients living with serious illnesses—drives all that we do. Since 1980, we’ve helped pioneer the world of biotech in our fight against the world’s toughest diseases. With our focus on four therapeutic areas –Oncology, Inflammation, General Medicine, and Rare Disease– we reach millions of patients each year. Amgen is advancing a broad and deep pipeline of medicines to treat cancer, heart disease, inflammatory conditions, rare diseases, and obesity and obesity-related conditions. As a member of the Amgen team, you’ll help make a lasting impact on the lives of patients as we research, manufacture, and deliver innovative medicines to help people live longer, fuller happier lives. Our award-winning culture is collaborative, innovative, and science based. If you have a passion for challenges and the opportunities that lay within them, you’ll thrive as part of the Amgen team. Join us and transform the lives of patients while transforming your career. Senior Manager, R&D Business Operations, Budget Management & Execution What You Will Do Let’s do this. Let’s change the world. In this vital role, the Senior Manager, R&D Business Operations, Budget Management & Execution will lead the end-to-end budget execution process for assigned R&D organizations and serve as a trusted partner to functional leadership and R&D Finance. The Senior Manager is accountable for the timely and high-quality delivery of annual budget planning, quarterly forecast updates and close activities, leadership reporting, and forward-looking financial insights. This role translates business priorities and changes in functional strategy into accurate budget projections and financial forecasts, helping leaders understand spending trends, risks, opportunities, and potential trade-offs. The Senior Manager will also manage and develop members of the Budget Management & Execution team, establish consistent ways of working within the supported organization, contribute to capability standards and process improvements, and independently determine the operational approach required to meet financial and business objectives. Key Responsibilities Lead the end-to-end budget management and execution process for assigned R&D organization(s), including annual budget planning, quarterly forecast updates, close activities, leadership updates, and other periodic financial deliverables. Serve as the primary Budget Management & Execution partner for functional leadership and R&D Finance, ensuring financial forecasts reflect business priorities, evolving strategy, and the prioritization of activities. Translate changes in baseline spend, portfolio or operational assumptions, resource needs, and business priorities into clear financial implications, forecasts, risks, and recommended actions. Maintain disciplined governance of budget plans, including reconciliation of actuals and commitments to plan and identification of meaningful forecast variances and emerging spending trends. Lead the collection, challenge, validation, and synthesis of planning assumptions and long-range spend drivers supporting annual budget and long-range planning activities. Develop leadership-ready financial reporting, analyses, and narratives that clearly communicate budget status, drivers of change, risks and opportunities, resource utilization, and decision points. Provide analytical support for functional initiatives, productivity opportunities, scenario development, and business case generation, including measurement of expected and realized benefits where appropriate. Enable execution of capital and operating expense plans through forecasting, funding alignment, financial tracking, and partnership with relevant functional and finance stakeholders. Provide expert budget execution support across the procure-to-pay process, resolving escalated issues and partnering with transactional finance, sourcing, and other business partners to improve execution and controls. Lead and coordinate finance-driven periodic activities such as accruals, purchase order maintenance, forecast updates, and ad hoc financial exercises. Serve as an advanced user of financial planning, reporting, and collaboration systems and promote consistent application of tools, processes, and data standards across the supported organization. Advance self-service and data-driven decision making by improving dashboards, reporting products, analytics, and other tools that provide leaders with timely and actionable financial insights. Contribute to the development and continuous improvement of Budget Management & Execution processes, standards, tools, and operating practices, identifying opportunities to simplify work, strengthen controls, improve cycle time, and increase scalability. Contribute business-partner perspective to R&D Finance, Corporate Finance, and other cross-functional initiatives affecting budget management and execution. Build and maintain strong partnerships across R&D functions, R&D Finance and FP&A, Global Strategic Sourcing, transactional finance, Supplier Management & Performance Analytics, and other business and corporate partners. People Leadership Manage the day-to-day activities and priorities of assigned Budget Management & Execution team members, ensuring high-quality and consistent delivery across supported functions. Translate business plans and objectives into clear priorities, assignments, timelines, and expectations for the team. Provide coaching, feedback, training, and development to direct reports and other team members, helping build financial, analytical, business-partnering, and leadership capabilities. Allocate resources and adjust team priorities as business needs evolve while maintaining delivery of core financial commitments. Foster a collaborative, inclusive, customer-focused environment that encourages continuous improvement, strong judgment, and accountability for results. What We Expect of You We are all different, yet we all use our unique contributions to serve patients. The professional we seek is a future-ready leader who brings financial and business acumen, operational rigor, strong people leadership, and a continuous-improvement mindset—someone who can simplify complexity, elevate insights, and influence across a matrix to drive outcomes. Basic Qualifications Doctorate degree and 2 years of biotech/pharma business operations and/or financial analytics experience OR Master’s degree and 4 years of biotech/pharma business operations and/or financial analytics experience OR Bachelor’s degree and 6 years of biotech/pharma business operations and/or financial analytics experience OR Associate’s degree and 10 years of biotech/pharma business operations and/or financial analytics experience OR High school diploma / GED and 12 years of biotech/pharma business operations and/or financial analytics experience Preferred Qualifications Advanced degree in business, finance, life sciences, or a related field. Demonstrated experience in budget management, financial planning, forecasting, reporting, and variance/root-cause analysis. Experience leading professional employees and/or demonstrated leadership of teams, projects, programs, or financial resources. Strong project and operational management experience, including the ability to establish priorities, manage competing deliverables, and drive high-quality execution. Working knowledge of the drug development process and how R&D organizations translate scientific and business strategy into portfolios, operating plans, and investment decisions. Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with functional leaders and finance stakeholders and translate business priorities into financial forecasts and actionable insights. Experience developing executive- or leadership-level financial narrati