The Role
Building on the success of our platform in infectious diseases and positive INT data, Moderna is expanding its footprint in oncology. We are seeking a Senior Director of New Product Planning for our early oncology programs, from discovery through clinical proof of concept.
The Senior Director will shape product and development strategy across the early oncology portfolio. They will connect each program’s mechanism of action with disease biology to identify where it could deliver meaningful clinical benefit and change treatment decisions. Working with program leaders and colleagues across Research, Development, Commercial, and Manufacturing, they will translate that opportunity into target product profiles, indication and development choices, and recommendations on how programs and opportunities should be prioritized across the portfolio.
The successful candidate will bring demonstrated ability to lead program and portfolio strategy and a systems-thinking approach to integrating scientific, clinical, and market evidence. They will frame choices, lead cross-functional debate, and present recommendations to senior leaders on which opportunities to advance and where to focus investment and resources before development paths are fully defined.
Here’s What You’ll Do
Scientific and disease understanding
Develop a deep understanding of Moderna’s platform and its application to oncology.
Work with scientific and clinical colleagues to assess how each program’s mechanism of action could affect disease, including the implications of tumor biology, patient heterogeneity, and biomarkers.
Independently evaluate mechanistic, translational, and clinical evidence and its implications for program strategy, including disease progression and clinical endpoints.
Engage directly with scientific evidence and external experts to evaluate competing hypotheses and identify unresolved biological questions that affect development choices.
Market and competitive understanding
Understand how patients move through diagnosis, staging, biomarker testing, treatment selection, assessment, and subsequent treatment. Identify who makes each decision and how clinical evidence, physician judgment, patient preferences, and access shape those choices, including unmet needs within current standards of care.
Integrate market and competitive expertise into early program decisions.
Evaluate approved therapies, emerging mechanisms, and competitor programs, including their clinical evidence, development timelines, and potential strengths and limitations.
Develop scenarios for how standards of care and treatment pathways may evolve, including changes in treatment sequencing and the requirements for future differentiation.
Use direct conversations with KOLs, treating physicians, and other internal and external experts, together with scientific and market evidence, to test program assumptions and resolve questions that affect development choices.
Product and development strategy
Lead a disciplined strategy process with program teams: frame the choices, identify the information needed, structure debate around alternatives and tradeoffs, and make the logic for program decisions explicit.
Apply a biotech investment mindset to program development, identifying the most efficient path to reduce key risks and reach proof of concept. Define the evidence needed to justify further investment and adapt recommendations as data emerge.
Shape strategy and prioritization across the early oncology portfolio. Develop and present recommendations to senior leaders on which opportunities to advance and where to focus investment and resources, with clear alternatives, tradeoffs, and evidence gaps.
Integrate scientific, disease, market, and competitive insights to define where each oncology program can succeed and prioritize indications, patient populations, treatment settings, and lines of therapy.
Develop and refine target product profiles with program teams that connect the program’s…