Senior Director, Digitization Strategy Center of Excellence

Job Description

General Summary:

As a key strategic leader in Global Clinical Operations (GCO), the Senior Director, Digitization Strategy Center of Excellence is responsible for driving the implementation of transformation initiatives that enhance clinical trial and development operations within GCO and across cross functional GMDA collaborators. The Senior Director will enable the acceleration of trial and developmental milestones on high priority pipeline diseases (e.g. T1D, Kidney, Pain and CF) through relevant, effective and optimized end to end trial operations processes, driving a digital and systems strategy and enabling capabilities with a focus on innovation (e.g. digitization, AI/ML). This role is responsible for enabling the generation of data, insights and analytics to drive decision making across GCO and broader GMDA functions. The ideal candidate will bring deep expertise in clinical operations, relevant disease areas and proven track record of designing and implementing transformative AI/ML strategies to identify opportunities for optimization and acceleration across the trial lifecycle. This role will use a combination of data, analytics and process optimization to drive performance excellence and business transformation for GCO. The Senior Director will partner with global stakeholders to embed transformations into development processes, optimize efficiency, and enable data-driven decision-making while maintaining compliance and ethical standards. By building and leading a high-performing team, this leader fosters a culture of continuous improvement and capability building, ensuring the organization is future-ready and equipped to deliver impactful transformation

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead the strategy, design, digitization, implementation, and continuous improvement of global clinical operations end to end processes to identify opportunities to drive value (e.g. increased efficiencies, reduction of manual work effort, trial cost optimization).
• Design and lead high-impact strategic transformation initiatives and priorities, with a focus on enabling business impact through well-designed change management and process re-design
• Partner with GCO program teams and GMDA teams to define innovations to support disease strategies and capabilities across Vertex disease areas (e.g. AI-enabled patient finding, trial site identification, predictive modeling)
• Option - Take charge of the Advanced Analytics capabilities, building a strong team over time, to enable real-time insights through AI-driven models, self-service analytics, and predictive intelligence to drive trial operational excellence.
• Develop and partner to execute on multi-year roadmap for GCO, including evaluating, implementing and optimizing strategic clinical trial solutions/tools to enhance automation, enable data driven decision-making and create simplified and orchestrated user experiences.
• Collaborate across the GCO team to develop value delivery plans, goals, and metrics linked to business objectives including articulating relevant value for transformation initiatives (e.g. time savings, cost, NPV)
• Leverage external insights from digital health, AI, and professional networks to inform capability-building, solution prioritization, and future-ready operations
• Identify repeatable transformation capabilities to drive business process simplification and enhance productivity to achieve cost efficiencies across trial lifecycle
• Partner with trial vendors and internal team members to test and validate new transformative solutions, ensuring change management and process transformation is in place to drive impact
• Drive AI-enabled process simplification initiatives to achieve efficiencies across GCO
• Define success metrics and track ROI for transformation initiatives, demonstrating tangible business value including speed, quality, and cost
• Option - Lead change management efforts to embed AI-enhanced data & analytics capabilities into strategic decision-making, ensuring agility and scalability
• Build training and enablement programs to upskill teams and foster confidence in AI-driven processes
• Serve as a trusted advisor to GCOLT and GMDA Leaders, articulating the business case for transformation initiatives
• Communicate progress, impact, and lessons learned across the organization to maintain transparency and momentum

Education and Experience:

• 10+ years of experience in Clinical Operations roles
• 10+ years of experience in driving analytics, AI, and technology initiatives
• Demonstrated expertise in change management methodologies and organizational transformation
• Proven ability to translate innovation strategies into operational executi