Associate Director, Strategic Planning

Job Description

The Marketing Strategy & Integration AD role is responsible for enhancing brand strategy through an insight-led approach that prioritizes closing gaps in care and advancing patient outcomes. This role partners across business units, therapeutic areas, and innovation and analytics teams to translate market insights into actionable plans and initiatives that drive measurable public health and business impact.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead development of holistic PHI plans in partnership with PHI and brand teams, leveraging PHI capabilities to address gaps—especially for high-need populations.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with analytics, brands, innovation, customer engagement to gather and analyze market research, competitive intelligence, and care-gap data to identify untapped business growth opportunities.

• Embed health equity into go-to-market plans and brand strategy, prioritizing closing care gaps and improving patient outcomes to drive equitable health for all.

• Foster cross-functional partnerships to translate insights into scalable, patient-centered programs and digital health solutions, collaborating with innovation, analytics and IT teams

• Apply measurement frameworks and data-driven decision-making to track outcomes, demonstrate impact, iterate, and expand programs.

• Serve as PHI strategists, first point of contact for Brands: synthesize TA/BU priorities and customer needs into a holistic, overarching insight-led plan—co-developed with Brands and PHI leads/SMEs—to deliver integrated, measurable outcomes.

• Identify untapped business opportunities & embed market research, competitive analysis, care-gap diagnostics and a health-equity lens into GTM design, pilots, scaling, and impact measurement.

• Serve as the L3 subject-matter experts –SMEs- in gaps in care, health equity and patient journeys: partner with BUs, PHI Leads/SMEs and cross‑functional teams to resource, and scale prioritized opportunities and drive pull‑through.

• Act as strategic enablers and connectors: inform business plans as strategic thought partners, bridging stakeholders and translating priorities into actionable, scalable initiatives.

• Assess ecosystem partnership opportunities and translate them into feasible execution models.

• Collaborate with the Customer Engagement & Innovation team to translate BU priorities into engagement opportunities, program designs, and measurable impact metrics.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, or related field (MBA or MPH preferred).

• Minimum of 10 years experience in strategic marketing planning within biopharmaceutical or related field

• Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams and manage multiple projects.

• Excellent communication, collaboration, and stakeholder engagement skills.

Success Profile: Strategic thinker with a strong bias for action—consistently delivers measurable outcomes and gets things done. Proactive and resourceful, advancing initiatives in ambiguous environments; excels at cultivating cross-functional relationships to drive collaboration and alignment.

Required Skills:

Brand Collaboration, Communication, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Integrated Marketing, Marketing Initiatives, Marketing Integration, Marketing Planning, Program Management, Public Health, Strategic Planning

Preferred Skills:

Managing Ambiguity, Resourcefulness, Stakeholder Engagement

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.  As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.  For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

EEOC Know Your Rights

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We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

Learn more about your rights, including under California, Colorado and other US State Acts

The salary range for this role is

$142,400.00 - $224,100.00

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits.  Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

You can apply for this role through https://jobs.merck.com/us/en (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

N/A

Job Posting End Date:

07/24/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.