Sr Director, R&D Data Science - Head of Data Strategy & Products – TA Focus

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com

Job Function:

Data Analytics & Computational Sciences

Job Sub Function:

Data Science

Job Category:

People Leader

All Job Posting Locations:

Zug, Switzerland

Job Description:

Johnson and Johnson Innovative Medicine (J&J IM), a pharmaceutical company of Johnson & Johnson is recruiting for a Sr Director, R&D Data Science - Head of Data Strategy & Products – TA Focus.  This position has a primary location of Titusville, NJ but is also open to Spring House, PA; Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA or Zug, Switzerland.  The position requires 25% travel. 

For US applicants, please use requisition: R-035880

Our expertise in Innovative Medicine is informed and inspired by patients, whose insights fuel our science-based advancements. Visionaries like you work on teams that save lives by developing the medicines of tomorrow. 

Join us in developing treatments, finding cures, and pioneering the path from lab to life while championing patients every step of the way. Learn more at https://www.jnj.com/innovative-medicine  

Position Summary:

The “Head of Data Strategy & Products – TA Focus” leads development of Data Strategy and the strategy, design, and delivery of user-centric, reusable data products that enable delivery of Data Science and AI solutions for TA Discovery and drug development.  

This leader will be managing 3 specialized sub-teams:  Data Strategy & Products for Oncology TA, Data Strategy & Products for Immunology TA, and Data Strategy & Products for Neuroscience TA.  This leader will be implementing use cases to unify data across domains, scale semantic/knowledge and embedding services, and institutionalize data governance. 

This role establishes the productization of high-value data assets across TAs focusing on internal and external data sources (e.g. performance data, competitor information etc.) and RWE. Head of Data Strategy & Products – TA Focus works in close collaboration with Data Science TA teams. 
 
A core responsibility includes developing a TA Ontology as the semantic backbone of TA data, aligned with the broader strategy of integration of R&D data landscape. The ontology serves as a foundational layer for data product standardization, reuse, and interoperability. The Head of Data Strategy & Products – TA focuses on working in close collaboration with centralized Data Product Architecture & Governance, Knowledge Management functions. Seamless integration between data product structures and graph-based reasoning capabilities is jointly ensured. 
 
Beyond the close collaboration with the Data Product Architecture & Governance, Knowledge Management, Master Data Management, the following liaisons are critical for the success to establish a Data Strategy & Products function for TAs: 

• Collaborates with the broader Data Science and Digital Health team 
• Ensures alignment with the master data management team on shared entities e.g., clinical trial sites, studies etc. and controlled vocabulary e.g., indications, therapeutic areas etc. 

The Head of Data Strategy & Products – TAs plays a central role in driving awareness, engagement, and adoption of data products across TA Discovery, clinical development, operations, and adjacent functions. 

By fostering a culture of data literacy, trust, and self-service, the Head of Data Strategy & Products – TA ensures that data assets are not only built but embraced and sustained as enterprise capabilities. 

Key Responsibilities:

Data Strategy:

• Develop data strategy as an ongoing program of improvement, partnering with Data Science TA teams in aligning to business needs and priorities of TAs 

Data Product Strategy & Execution 

• Defines and maintains a roadmap for data products supporting TAs 
• Embeds product thinking, agile delivery, and FAIR data principles across the product lifecycle. 
• Ontology & Semantic Modeling 
• Leads the development and governance of a TA Ontology to enable semantic consistency across TA domains. 
• Aligns the ontology with internal metadata standards and external frameworks 

Collaboration with Knowledge Management 

• Contributes to shared governance of vocabularies, taxonomies, and semantic layers that enable knowledge reasoning, search, and graph-based automation. 

Team & Operating Model Leadership 

• Builds and leads a cross-functional team. 
• Establishes agile delivery processes, value tracking metrics, and product lifecycle governance. 

Value Realization & Communication 

• Defines and tracks KPIs. 
• Communicates product vision, roadmaps, and value realization to stakeholders. 

Qualifications:

• Education & Experience

• PhD or Masters degree in life sciences, informatics, natural sciences, data science, or related discipline. 
• 10+ years in data platform/data engineering/governance leadership, with significant experience in pharma/biotech R&D or regulated domains. 
• Strong business acumen in pharmaceutical and /or Data Science, drug discovery and data product development/data science solution space  
• Track of records working with high throughput screening data, omics, chemical and biological data for building data science solutions at scale 
• Prior leadership of multi-disciplinary teams and vendor/partner ecosystems 
• Strong record of delivering business-critical data solutions. 
• Experience in data product design and semantic modeling. 
• Familiarity with ontological frameworks, metadata governance, and industry standards. 
• Strong working experience with pre-clinical data, clinical data and real-world data is required 
• Track of record in building data strategy to making business impact 
• Strong background in data analysis, solution development and architecture 
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and written skills. 
• Energy, enthusiasm and drive to create a positive working relationship with the business and the team 
• Experience in managing and leading a team, showing understanding of different cultures to achieve global business objectives 
• Ability to multi-task, incorporating good organizational skills and flexibility, to prioritize work and deliver the maximum business value 
• Ability to build strong networks across the business to develop sponsorship at all levels of the business 
• Ability to influence and drive change in a complex organizational environment.  
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to assess and manage data-related risks. 

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic & Systems Thinking • Operational Excellence • Governance Mindset 
• People & Culture Builder • Outcome Orientation • Risk & Compliance Stewardship 

Strategic Impact:

Through this role, high-value data products are positioned as strategic enablers of insight, automation, and compliance across TAs. By embedding semantic rigor and aligning with industry-wide data harmonization efforts, the Head of Data Strategy & Products plays a central role in transforming how TAst data is structured, shared, and used across the organization and beyond. 

Other:

• Travel – Less than 25% to conferences and key internal meetings  

Johnson & Johnson is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by federal, state or local law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Johnson and Johnson is committed to providing an interview process that is inclusive of our applicants’ needs. If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request an accommodation, please email the Employee Health Support Center (ra-employeehealthsup@its.jnj.com) or contact AskGS to be directed to your accommodation resource.

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