Director, Regional Marketing Lead Lung, Head & Neck, GI Cancers and Subcutaneous Launch

Role Overview

Our Oncology organization is dedicated to delivering breakthrough innovations that extend and improve the lives of people with cancer across Asia Pacific. We are focused on translating breakthrough science into meaningful customer solutions, expanding access to innovative medicines, and delivering strong execution across priority oncology brands and indications.

The Director, Regional Oncology Marketing Lead - Lung, Head & Neck, GI Cancers and Subcutaneous Launch is a key regional commercial leadership role responsible for shaping franchise strategy, brand planning, portfolio prioritization, forecasting, and lifecycle strategy across assigned tumour areas and the subcutaneous launch. The role partners closely with markets, cross-functional regional teams, and global stakeholders to identify growth opportunities, anticipate market challenges, inform investment choices, and strengthen long-term portfolio value.

The role requires strong strategic thinking, business judgment, analytical discipline, and cross-functional leadership. The incumbent will translate market insights, competitive intelligence, access realities, customer needs, and financial assumptions into clear strategic recommendations, actionable brand plans, and high-quality business decisions across Asia Pacific.

What will you do:

• Owns regional franchise strategy, brand planning, and portfolio priorities across assigned lung, head & neck, GI cancer indications and the subcutaneous launch.

• Leads strategic planning, long-range planning inputs, forecasting assumptions, performance reviews, and opportunity assessments in partnership with country teams and cross-functional stakeholders.

• Identifies key growth opportunities, market challenges, access risks, competitive threats, conversion barriers, and strategic business questions requiring regional leadership.

• Balances regional strategic direction with local market adaptation across diverse Asia Pacific market environments, particularly across large mature markets, access-constrained markets, and fast-evolving competitive landscapes.

• Requires strong matrix leadership across commercial, medical, market access, policy, analytics, finance, regulatory, supply, global teams, and country leadership.

• May include responsibility for guiding, coaching, and prioritizing the work of marketers or project teams supporting assigned priorities.

1) Franchise Strategy and Brand Planning

• Lead the annual strategic planning and brand planning processes for assigned lung, head & neck, GI cancer indications and the subcutaneous launch across Asia Pacific.

• Translate portfolio priorities into clear strategic choices, customer priorities, brand objectives, subcutaneous conversion priorities, and market-level planning guidance.

• Identify key growth opportunities, market access challenges, competitive threats, guideline changes, biomarker dynamics, customer needs, treatment adoption barriers, and business risks across priority markets.

• Develop strategic recommendations on indication prioritization, sequencing, market focus, investment choices, resource allocation, and launch acceleration priorities.

• Lead regional strategic planning workshops, brand plan reviews, launch planning discussions, and market business reviews to align priorities and strengthen plan quality.

2) Business Planning, Forecasting and Opportunity Assessment

• Lead regional inputs into long-range planning, annual budget, forecasting, and demand planning processes for assigned lung, head & neck, GI cancer franchises and the subcutaneous launch.

• Consolidate, challenge, and refine key market assumptions, including epidemiology, patient flow, treatment rates, biomarker testing, access timing, market share, duration of therapy, conversion assumptions, and competitive impact.

• Assess evolving treatment landscapes, clinical readouts, competitor activity, guideline updates, reimbursement dynamics, subcutaneous adoption drivers, and major congress data to identify business implications.

• Identify priority growth opportunities, market challenges, access barriers, competitive threats, under-penetrated segments, and subcutaneous launch acceleration opportunities by market and indication.

• Monitor business performance against forecast and prepare leadership updates, business cases, scenario plans, and investment recommendations to support decision-making and resource allocation.

3) Launch and Lifecycle Strategy

• Lead regional launch strategy for new indications, lifecycle opportunities, and the subcutaneous launch as assets transition from new product planning into the commercial organization.

• Define strategic launch priorities, success metrics, customer segmentation, positioning, value proposition, conversion strategy, and market activation principles.

• Partner with new product planning, medical, market access, policy, regulatory, supply, finance, and country teams to ensure launch assumptions, access sequencing, supply readiness, and strategic choices are aligned.

• Oversee launch readiness governance by tracking strategic risks, access dependencies, competitive considerations, budget needs, supply considerations, and market-specific launch requirements.

• Guide markets in adapting regional launch strategy into locally relevant plans that enable competitive differentiation, uptake, conversion, and sustained performance after launch.

4) Cross-Functional and Enterprise Leadership

• Partner closely with commercial, medical, market access, policy, analytics, regulatory, supply, finance, global, and country teams to enable integrated planning and decision-making.

• Represent the regional commercial perspective in relevant cross-functional discussions, governance forums, launch readiness reviews, and planning processes.

• Provide Asia Pacific market, customer, access, competitive, and launch readiness insights to global teams to influence global strategy, evidence planning, asset prioritization, and execution guidance.

• Foster alignment and high-quality decision-making across markets with different levels of maturity, access environments, treatment adoption patterns, and competitive realities.

5) People Leadership and Capability Building

• Guide, coach, and support marketers or project teams responsible for assigned brand, indication, and subcutaneous launch priorities.

• Create clarity on priorities, deliverables, timelines, decision points, and ways of working to ensure strong strategic discipline and accountability.

• Build marketing capability across strategic planning, brand planning, forecasting, opportunity assessment, competitive strategy, launch excellence, and cross-functional leadership.

• Contribute to a collaborative, accountable, and inclusive team culture that enables high performance across regional and country teams.

What should you have:

• 10 years of pharmaceutical industry experience with strong exposure to oncology, specialty care, or innovative medicines.

• Substantial local, regional or global strategic marketing experience, ideally including franchise, portfolio, or major launch ownership.

• Strong business acumen and strategic thinking, with ability to manage complexity and make high-quality trade-off decisions.

• Demonstrated experience leading brand planning, forecasting, performance reviews, opportunity assessments, launch strategy, or lifecycle strategy.

• Demonstrated ability to influence across a matrix and lead without direct authority.

• People management experience with a track record of coaching and developing talent.

• Strong analytical skills with ability to synthesize market, customer, access, competitive, and launch readiness insights into clear strategic recommendations.

• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and executive presentation skills.

• Proven ability to lead complex cross-functional initiatives with strong ownership and discipline.

• Bachelor's degree in business, life sciences, or a related field required.

Preferred

• Experience in oncology inline brand strategy, including lung, head & neck, GI cancers, or related solid tumours.

• Broad understanding of Asia Pacific market dynamics, access environments, competitive intensity, and launch challenges.

• Experience engaging global development, commercial, supply, launch readiness, or governance teams.

• Exposure to long-range planning, forecast governance, business case development, portfolio prioritization, or major formulation / delivery model launches.

• Advanced degree such as MBA, MSc, or equivalent.

Who we are:

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for:

Imagine getting up in the morning for a job as important as helping to save and improve lives around the world. Here, you have that opportunity. You can put your empathy, creativity, digital mastery, or scientific genius to work in collaboration with a diverse group of colleagues who pursue and bring hope to countless people who are battling some of the most challenging diseases of our time. Our team is constantly evolving, so if you are among the intellectually curious, join us-and start making your impact today