Associate Director, Development Project Manager

MSD

Associate Director Project Manager leading drug development teams for pharmaceutical company. Ensuring successful execution of integrated project plans and driving business process improvements.

Posted 6/5/2026full-timeRahway • New Jersey, Pennsylvania • 🇺🇸 United StatesMid-LevelSenior💰 $142,400 - $224,100 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

PMP

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Managing the end-to-end drug development process, including projects of significant complexity; driving cross-functional teams and leading by influence to develop comprehensive strategies and ensure successful execution.
Act as enterprise leaders by guiding teams through the creation, approval, and execution of integrated project plans appropriate to the project's phase of development and complexity.
Building and maintaining project schedules and critical project information in enterprise project management systems and databases.
Using these tools to integrate activities across key team members, proactively identify risks, address uncertainty, escalate appropriately, assess program status, and ensure clear and effective communication with key team, management, and cross-departmental stakeholders.
Leveraging relationships and networks to improve and enhance team dynamics; proactively identifying and removing obstacles to drive business results.
Leading key team meetings including creating thoughtful agendas, ensuring appropriate participation, contributing project management insights, and following up to ensure the team continues to make progress while holding others accountable.
Actively participating and completing ongoing training and personal development activities to increase leadership competency and to gain knowledge and skill in the discipline of project management and the business and science of pharmaceutical product discovery and development.
Providing mentoring, coaching, and oversight to partner project managers working on common projects.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Bachelor’s degree required; concentration in a scientific or applied discipline preferred
Minimum of five (5) years of experience in project management or a related role required
Advanced degree (e.g., MS, MBA, Ph.D., PharmD) preferred
Product development experience strongly preferred (ideally in pharmaceutical/biotech industry)
Experience and knowledge of clinical drug development strongly preferred; including the different phases of development and how the various functional areas contribute to a comprehensive strategy
Project management certification (PMP) and/or formal coursework/training in project management strongly preferred

Benefits

Comp & perks

medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family)
retirement benefits, including 401(k)
paid holidays
vacation
compassionate and sick days

ATS Keywords

✓ Tailor your resume

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

project managementdrug developmentrisk assessmentproject schedulingintegrated project planscross-functional team leadershipmentoringcoaching

Soft Skills

communicationleadershipinfluenceproblem-solvingteam dynamicsaccountability

Certifications

PMP