Director, Innovation (Digital Early Incubation, Technical Program Management)

How you will make an impact:

This is an exciting opportunity to join a team identifying unmet patient needs and boldly designing a new category of digital products for Edwards Lifesciences. Edwards’ Advanced Innovation & Technology team is deeply dedicated to solving the complex challenges in the broader structural heart field in order to transform treatment and significantly improve patients’ lives around the world.

Edwards Lifesciences Advanced Innovation & Technology (AI&T) division has a unique opportunity for a Director, Innovation (Digital Early Incubation, Technical Program Management) to join our growing team, to be part of the team driving a new digital innovation portfolio for the future of Edwards Lifesciences. Be part of the team to build and implement the strategy for needs driven innovation within the AI&T incubator driving a multidisciplinary project team to identify opportunities. This highly collaborative role will partner with multiple teams that compete on numerous projects based on value proposition and feasibility of new products.

The Director, Innovation (Digital Early Incubation, Technical Program Management) will contribute to the planning, execution, and delivery of novel digital and software-based solutions within Edwards Lifesciences’ early-stage incubator, guiding digital product concepts from ambiguity to architectural clarity. This role will be pivotal in driving cross-functional alignment, managing technical complexity, and ensuring timely delivery of innovative digital health products that complement Edwards’ cardiovascular portfolio.

Key Responsibilities:

• Deeply understand clinical management paradigms, anatomy, and pathophysiology to define clinical unmet needs for various patient segments along the care pathway

• Actively contribute to generation of new digital product concepts, prioritization/screening of concepts, and de-risking through data-driven methods

• Robustly characterize minimum viable product, define strategies for demonstrating clinical proof-of-concept for software prototypes, and understand market adoption criteria

• Develop, plan and prioritize impactful projects and activities based on value proposition, clinical needs driven innovation, and feasibility of new digital products, with accountability for successful completion of all project deliverables

• Partner with internal technology and business leaders to identify, develop and execute new whitespace product opportunities

• Manage multiple concurrent software development programs, ensuring delivery on time and within scope

• Identify project and schedule risks and dependencies, developing complex mitigation strategies, alternative solutions, resolving issues, etc. in collaboration with cross functional groups.

• Collaborate with product manager, UX/UI designer, and software engineers on requirements, roadmaps, and execution of project deliverables

• Communicate program status, risks, and dependencies to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders

• Maintain detailed program documentation, including project plans, timelines, dependencies and executive readouts

• Serve as visionary for software architecture, factoring in integration feasibility, system-level impact and scalability to go from early prototype phase to builds that will be validated and shipped to clinical end-users, defining transition plans between the upstream and downstream phases

• Implement and champion agile methodologies and lean startup principles for rapid prototyping and iteration. Balance speed, learning, and rigor, ensuring concept work progresses while preserving optionality.

• Oversee processes for data ingestion, normalization, and structuring from multiple sources (device, EMR, cloud platforms)

• Identify opportunities for leveraging AI, cloud, and data analytics in digital health solutions

What you'll need (Required):

• Bachelor's Degree or Equivalent in Engineering, Science or Business Administration with 12 years of relevant experience -OR- Master's Degree or equivalent with 10 years of relevant experience -OR- Ph.D. or equivalent with 8 years of relevant experience (Degree in Computer Science strongly preferred)

• Strong track record of technical program management for new early-stage or concept-stage software/digital product development initiatives in the medtech domain, with proven ability to coordinate multidisciplinary technical teams and manage dependencies

• Proficiency with project management and collaboration tools (e.g. JIRA, Confluence)

• Experience developing