Director, Marketing Technology & Platform Lead

Headquartered in Carlsbad, California, with offices in Boston, Massachusetts, and Dublin, Ireland, Ionis has been discovering medical breakthroughs for more than three decades. We’re pioneers in RNA-targeted medicines, revolutionizing drug discovery and transforming lives for patients with unmet needs. With multiple marketed medicines and a leading pipeline in neurology, cardiology, and other high-need areas, we drive innovation in RNA therapies and advance new approaches in gene editing.

About the role

We are seeking a marketing technology leader to own the commercial customer experience platform powering digital and omnichannel HCP and patient engagement across our portfolio. This role partners closely with brand, omnichannel, CX operations, commercial analytics, IT, and external partners to develop and translate engagement strategy into reliable, compliant, and scalable execution across CRM, marketing automation, web, and emerging channels.

You will elevate Ionis’ customer experience capabilities by owning the platform roadmap, integration architecture, consent and data-governance standards, and Customer Experience Platform (CXP) delivery model—ensuring a scalable ecosystem supporting specialty to mass-market indications, including future therapeutic launches.

Work location: Carlsbad, CA; open to remote

Responsibilities

• Own the marketing technology roadmap across the stack, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC), Salesforce Data Cloud (DC), analytic data architecture, website tracking management, and marketing data—deciding what to add, replace, or sunset based on Ionis’ stage and budget.
• Lead build-vs-buy evaluations and drive defensible platform recommendations for commercial leadership.
• Own the CXP roadmap, optimizing digital and omnichannel enablement for ongoing and upcoming launches via tailored orchestration, automation, personalization, deliverability, domain/IP reputation, and scalable journey design.
• Manage the CXP development team, owning scope, SOWs, backlog, sprint cadence, and capacity planning across launch and in-line brands.
• Set and enforce build standards, QA gates, and release management to ensure deployments are correct, on time, and compliant.
• Serve as the quality and accountability owner for outsourced output—reviewing architecture and configuration decisions, preventing technical debt, and ensuring knowledge and documentation remain with Ionis.
• Manage the developer vendor relationship commercially, including performance, scope discipline, escalations, and renewal, and flex capacity around launch peaks.
• Own the integration architecture connecting CRM, CXP, web, paid media/search/social, and the commercial data warehouse, in partnership with IT and Commercial Analytics.
• Ensure a clean, shared data foundation across HCP and patient audiences for optimized measurement and analytics.
• Partner with Commercial Analytics to enable advanced segmentation, targeting, and next-best-action across execution platforms and partners.
• Own platform governance—environments, access controls, naming conventions, tagging taxonomy, and release management—and define and report platform KPIs such as deliverability, uptime, time-to-deploy, data quality, and capacity utilization.
• Stand up and enable new capabilities, such as new channels and dynamic content, so brand and operations teams can use them at scale.
• Serve as the commercial point of contact to IT for stack-related prioritization and architecture decisions, and partner with brand omnichannel strategists to ensure the platform delivers the journeys they design.
• Represent Ionis externally with technology and agency partners, industry peers, and platform vendors.

Key Deliverables

• A martech platform that scales reliably from specialty to mass-market indications, with deliverability, automation, and consent infrastructure for broad launches.
• An optimized outsourced CXP model as a predictable, well-governed delivery engine, protecting against technical debt and vendor lock-in.
• The integration and data-governance foundation enabling brand, omnichannel operations, and commercial analytics to work from a single trusted source.
• Platform standards, taxonomy, and consent governance ensuring compliant and comparable execution across brands, indications, and therapeutic areas.

Requirements

• Minimum of 15 years of experience in marketing technology, marketing operations, or digital platform roles with a bachelor’s degree; or 12 years with a master’s degree; or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years owning a marketing automation platform, with hands-on, deep CXP expertise (Journey Builder, Automation Studio, Email/Mobile Studio, Contact Builder, and data extensions).
• 3+ years of life sciences/pharma experience, ideally supporting HCP and/or patient marketing.
• Experience managing outsourced or agency developers and cross-functional delivery workstreams; direct people or vendor-team management preferred.
• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in marketing, business, information systems, computer science, or a related field. Advanced degree preferred; equivalent practical experience considered.

Skills

• Demonstrated ownership of a marketing technology stack and roadmap, including platform selection, integration, and vendor management.
• Proven ability to manage outsourced or agency developers—owning scope, quality, standards, and delivery rather than coding day-to-day.
• Strong working knowledge of consent and preference management and compliance for email and SMS (CAN-SPAM, TCPA, and applicable privacy regulations).
• Experience integrating martech platforms with CRM and/or data warehouse, with fluency in data architecture concepts and data quality.
• Ability to operate as the commercial counterpart to IT, influence senior stakeholders, frame complex trade-offs, and drive decisions to closure.
• Excellent communication skills, translating between technical detail and commercial priorities and right-sizing solutions for a growth-stage company.
• Hands-on Salesforce configuration and administration (Journey Builder, Automation Studio, Email/Mobile Studio, Contact Builder, and data extensions).
• Working command of martech and CRM integration patterns, data flows, consent/preference management, and email/SMS deliverability (domain/IP reputation, SPF, DKIM, DMARC).

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with Veeva CRM or SQL for querying, validating, joining, or troubleshooting CRM, web, or campaign datasets.
• CDP evaluation or implementation, tag management, and web/CMS platforms.
• SFMC/DC and/or relevant Salesforce certifications.
• Experience supporting a product launch, ideally transitioning from specialty to mass-market indications, including deliverability, scale, and automation demands.
• Experience supporting both HCP and patient/consumer (DTC) engagement and their differing data and consent requirements.
• Prior agency or consulting experience focused on martech delivery, platform implementation, or omnichannel enablement.
• Experience with pharmaceutical data, customer-level engagement data, and privacy-safe measurement approaches.

Pay

The pay scale for this position is $200,000 to $215,000.

Benefits

Ionis offers an excellent benefits package. Learn more about Ionis benefits.