Associate Director, CRM Product Owner

Job Description Summary

#LI-Hybrid

Novartis is on a mission to transform medicine and improve lives worldwide. As a global leader in healthcare, we leverage advanced technology and data to deliver patient-centric solutions, enhance customer engagement, and drive innovation. We collaborate closely with the US business, bringing insights and challenging ideas to empower smarter, data-driven decision-making. The US CRM organization sits within Strategy, Platforms & Transformation (SPT) – AI & Platform Products and plays a crucial role in driving the transformation to a next-generation Customer360 operating model.

Novartis seeks an accomplished product management leader with experience and demonstrated success transforming CRM capabilities within commercial operations. Strong innovation, partnership, and intellectual maturity are needed. A comprehensive understanding of best practices in CRM Data and AI applications is key to success in this role.

Reporting to CRM Product Management leadership, the Associate Director, CRM Product Owner supports the strategy, development, and delivery of priority CRM capabilities across the US CRM ecosystem. This role partners with business, peer SPT and technology teams to translate customer and field needs into clear requirements, manage a prioritized backlog, and drive execution through agile delivery. The Associate Director helps improve how Novartis engages customers by prioritizing process improvements through scalable technology enhancements, analytics, and user experience updates - while ensuring solutions meet governance, privacy, and compliance expectations.

This position will be located at East Hanover, NJ and will not have the ability to be located remotely. This position will require 10% travel as defined by the business (domestic and/ or international).”

Job Description

Key Responsibilities:

• Own and deliver a defined product area: Lead end-to-end delivery of assigned CRM capabilities, such as field productivity, customer engagement workflows, and medical engagement, from discovery through release, hypercare, enhancements, and ongoing maintenance.
• Translate business needs into requirements: Partner with stakeholders to gather, document, and translate insights into prioritized product features define user stories, acceptance criteria, and success measures.
• Manage and refine the backlog: Maintain a healthy backlog (prioritization, refinement cadence, dependencies, definition of ready/done) aligned to quarterly/PI planning and stakeholder priorities.
• Drive disciplined agile execution: Work with delivery teams to plan, execute, and track work; remove blockers; manage scope trade-offs; and ensure predictable, high-quality releases.
• Improve processes and user experience: Identify pain points in current workflows and propose enhancements; validate solutions with users; and support change adoption with clear documentation and enablement.
• Partner across business and IT: Coordinate with CRM product managers, architecture, analytics, privacy/legal, and commercial/medical stakeholders to align on requirements, sequencing, and release readiness.
• Ensure governance, privacy, and compliance: Follow established governance processes and support risk assessments to ensure best in class solutions meet regulatory, privacy, security, and data standards.
• Mentor and coordinate delivery resources: Provide day-to-day direction to extended team members (e.g., analysts, contractors) and contribute to capability building across the product owner community.
• Support change enablement and adoption: Partner with training and communications leads to ensure releases are understood, adopted, and measured; incorporate feedback into iterative improvements.
• Communicate status and outcomes: Provide concise updates on roadmap items, risks, decisions needed, and measurable outcomes to product management leadership and stakeholders.
• Contribute to product strategy and continuous improvement: Demonstrate a deep understanding of market & industry trends, user feedback, and performance data to inform roadmap recommendations and operational improvements.
• Maintain platform and domain awareness: Stay current on CRM platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Veeva) and evolving best practices; apply learnings pragmatically within the Novartis ecosystem.

Novartis seeks an accomplished product management leader with experience and demonstrated success transforming CRM capabilities within commercial operations. Strong innovation, partnership, and intellectual maturity are needed. A comprehensive understanding of best practices in CRM Data and AI applications is key to success in this role.

Essential Requirements:

• Education: Bachelor's degree in related field is required; Master of Science and/or MBA preferred
• Proven success in driving product management capabilities for large-scale CRM implementations.
• 5-7+ years of experience in product management, technology strategy, innovation, or leadership roles, preferably in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, or CRM sectors
• Deep understanding of the CRM landscape (Sales, Marketing and Service), including Salesforce (Agentforce, Marketing Cloud, Health Cloud, Data360, Core platform), Veeva, and the major and evolving players in the ecosystem.
• Understanding of CRM, AI, and Data platforms and architectures (e.g., Salesforce, Salesforce Data Cloud, Veeva, OpenAI, Snowflake, or similar data lake technologies).
• Experience being accountable for the operations of product management including backlog health and prioritization, agile practices and ceremonies, and driving strategic innovation.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to build stakeholder buy-in and alignment.
• Experience in AI-supported product management techniques including LLM supported user-story creation and process mapping
• Ability to foster cross-functional alignment of key stakeholders to create/support a streamlined and collaborative commercial CRM strategy.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to interpret complex data and make informed decisions.
• Ability to adapt strategies and approaches in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

The salary for this position is expected to range between $156,600.00 and $283,400.00per year.The final salary offered is determined based on factors like, but not limited to, relevant skills and experience, and upon joining Novartis will be reviewed periodically. Novartis may change the published salary range based on company and market factors.Your compensation will include a performance-based cash incentive and, depending on the level of the role, eligibility to be considered for annual equity awards.US-based eligible employees will receive a comprehensive benefits package that includes health, life and disability benefits, a 401(k) with company contribution and match, and a variety of other benefits. In addition, employees are eligible for a generous time off package including vacation, personal days, holidays and other leaves.

EEO Statement:

The Novartis Group of Companies are Equal Opportunity Employers. We do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training, promotion or other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.

Accessibility and reasonable accommodations:

The Novartis Group of Companies are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If, because of a medical condition or disability, you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or to perform the essential functions of a position, please send an e-mail to us.reasonableaccommodations@novartis.com or call +1(877)395-2339 and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. Please include the job requisition number in your message.

Salary Range

$152,600.00 - $283,400.00

Skills Desired:

• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Customer Engagement
• Customer Insights
• Data Analytics
• Digital Marketing
• Market Research
• Media Campaigns
• Product Marketing
• Stakeholder Engagement
• Stakeholder Management
• Team Leadership
• Waterfall Model