Director, Medical Affairs Operations

Key Role and Responsibilities

• Establish and run the operating cadence of Medical Affairs — annual and tactical planning, prioritization, and status reporting — in partnership with the Head of Medical Affairs and functional leads.
• Budget planning, tracking, and vendor and contract management for the Medical Affairs function.
• Define and report Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics that measure the quality, impact, and efficiency of Medical Affairs activities.
• Author and maintain Medical Affairs operating processes and SOPs, ensuring the function is audit-ready and launch-ready.
• Facilitate the Materials Review Committee (MRC) — intake, cadence, action tracking, and storage and disbursement of final deliverables.
• Plan and execute the operational delivery of scientific congresses, symposia, and advisory boards — logistics, budgets, vendors, contracting, content routing, and compliance — in partnership with the medical and field teams.
• Build the calendar, playbooks, and infrastructure that let the team scale event volume without sacrificing quality or compliance as the pipeline advances.
• Support the implementation and day-to-day administration of core Medical Affairs systems (e.g., CRM, insights and content platforms), driving consistent, high-quality use across the team.
• Support field medical infrastructure, onboarding, and enablement as new MSLs are integrated.
• Build the reporting and dashboards that turn field activity and insights into decision-ready views for Medical Affairs leadership.
• Serve as the AI vanguard within Medical Affairs — identifying workflow pain points and resolving them through targeted, compliant application of AI, automation, and analytics tools.
• Develop use cases, build automations and reusable workflows, and create the shared prompts, skills, and standards that make AI-native work the default across the team.
• Evaluate emerging capabilities and surface those with meaningful, compliant applicability to Medical Affairs.
• Serve as the operational connective tissue between Medical Affairs and the rest of the organization — Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, Regulatory, Commercial, and Legal.
• Coverage of launch-readiness workstreams in partnership with cross-functional teams.
• Ensure Medical Affairs activities and systems comply with legal, regulatory, and corporate standards.
• Champion the responsible, compliant adoption of AI and digital tools, maintaining data integrity, confidentiality, and appropriate controls and documentation.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree required; an advanced degree (e.g., MBA, PharmD, PhD, MS, or equivalent) is preferred.
• Familiarity with oncology, hematology, or cell therapy is valued; scientific literacy is an asset given the nature of Medical Affairs work.

Experience

• 8+ years of experience in Medical Affairs operations, medical excellence, business operations, or a comparable operations/program management function in the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industry.
• Demonstrated experience operating the core machinery of Medical Affairs — congresses, advisory boards, MRC/review, field support, budgets, and KPIs.
• Demonstrated, hands-on adoption of AI tools in real workflows — not only sponsoring adoption, but personally building automations, dashboards, or analyses. Deep AI expertise is not required; rapid learning and practical fluency are.
• Track record of building operating processes and systems in a fast-moving, high-growth environment with limited infrastructure; launch or launch-preparation experience is a strong plus.
• Strong working knowledge of U.S. compliance and regulatory requirements applicable to Medical Affairs and HCP interactions.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Rare combination of orchestrator and doer — able to move fluidly between designing an operating model and building it.
• Excellent program and project management, organizational, and prioritization skills across multiple concurrent initiatives.
• Strong technical and analytical chops; comfort building with AI, automation, and data tools, and modeling AI-native ways of working for the broader team.
• Self-directed operator who identifies problems and proposes solutions without prompting, scoping and launching initiatives with minimal oversight.
• Exceptional collaboration and influence; operates credibly with medical, field, and cross-functional leaders.
• High adaptability and comfort with ambiguity in a rapidly evolving, high-growth biotech environment.
• Strong ethical judgment, integrity, and commitment to compliance and data integrity.
• Passion for transforming patient outcomes through cutting-edge science and modern ways of working.

Salary Range

• The salary range for this position is $230,000 to $280,000, annually, with the opportunity to earn an annual bonus.
• Employees are also eligible to participate in Lyell’s Equity Incentive Plan.

About the Company

• Lyell is a clinical-stage company advancing a pipeline of next-generation CAR T-cell therapies for patients with solid tumors or hematologic malignancies.
• We are founded by cell therapy pioneers whose decades of research elevated the broader understanding of T-cell biology and its interaction with cancer.
• We are a fully integrated company capable of discovering new technologies, translating science into therapies, manufacturing cell therapy products, and clinically evaluating them in patients.
• We have a culture based on Science, Respect, Collaboration, and Courage.