Senior Director, Commercial Operations

Job description

Overview: The Senior Director, Commercial Operations is a strategic and operational leader responsible for building and advancing the capabilities, processes, systems, and services that enable commercial performance. The role serves as a senior business partner to Sales, Marketing, Market Access, Medical Affairs, Finance, and other cross-functional leaders, translating commercial strategy into disciplined execution across field operations, incentive compensation, and CRM. This leader will develop scalable operating models, strengthen ability to assess field execution, and provide enterprise leadership for incentive compensation strategies and governance. The role will have two – three direct reports, leverage technology and automation, and ensure initiatives and resources are deployed effectively and in accordance with applicable policies and compliance requirements. Key Responsibilities: Operational Excellence • Partner with commercial leadership to translate business, brand, and field strategies into integrated operating plans, priorities, capabilities, and execution roadmaps. • Assess current operations, selectively benchmark external practices, and implement scalable solutions that improve effectiveness, efficiency, quality, and speed. • Identify and eliminate low-value, duplicative, or fragmented work; simplify processes and clarify governance, decision rights, and accountability. • Manage operating expenses and cost-center budgets within scope, including forecasting, prioritization, and vendor oversight. Incentive Compensation Strategy and Leadership • Provide strategic oversight of the enterprise Incentive Compensation program, ensuring plans for eligible commercial field roles align with business strategy, brand priorities, role expectations, market dynamics, and desired field behaviors; guide senior leaders on design choices, tradeoffs, risks, and implications. • Lead Incentive Compensation governance and decision-making, establishing clear standards, decision rights, approval processes, controls, and cross-functional alignment across Sales, Finance, HR, Legal, Compliance, and other key stakeholders. • Oversee the end-to-end delivery of Incentive Compensation, ensuring the IC team, vendors, and partners effectively execute plan design, modeling, goal and quota setting, administration, calculations, payout validation, inquiries, disputes, and exception management with appropriate quality, controls, and service levels. • Set the strategic direction and accountability for the IC capability, monitoring plan effectiveness and business impact, managing vendor performance, driving continuous improvement and automation, building the multi-year capability roadmap, and developing a high-performing team with clear ownership for day-to-day execution. Field Operations and Sales Execution • Lead field operations capabilities, including field-force sizing and deployment, territory design and alignment, customer targeting and segmentation, call planning, resource optimization, field communications, and execution monitoring. • Partner with Sales and other field leadership to identify business challenges and opportunities and deploy tools, processes, and resources that improve customer engagement and field productivity. • Establish a disciplined field communication and sales execution program that supports consistent rollout of priorities, initiatives, tools, and performance expectations. • Maintain connection to the field and customer environment through appropriate field engagement and feedback mechanisms; translate feedback into practical execution improvements. Commercial Systems, Technology, and Automation • Partner with IT, AADS, Training, and business stakeholders to define and execute commercial CRM and technology strategy. • Integrate and automate CRM, sales-force automation, incentive compensation, reporting, and field tools to streamline work, strengthen controls, and improve productivity. • Identify and implement technologies and capabilities that improve execution, information flow, deliverable quality, and user experience. • Ensure appropriate governance, quality assurance, adoption, and compliant use of commercial systems, tools, and resources. Leadership and Cross-Functional Partnership • Build, develop, and lead an effective, unified team with clear accountabilities, strong capabilities, and