Field Director, Medical Affairs

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and execute the national field medical strategy, including territory design, deployment models, account prioritization, and scientific engagement plans.
• Scale and deploy the MSL team, including direct management of 5-7 MSLs.
• Establish and maintain field excellence standards, including coaching, mentoring, and performance frameworks across the field team.
• Define and track KPIs for the MSL team, measure effectiveness against medical strategic objectives, and take corrective action when KPIs are off-track.
• Drive and enable high-quality, compliant scientific exchange with HCPs across clinical moments where cessation matters, including specialists and primary care, and with senior clinical leaders who own workflow integration at those moments.
• Personally engage in the field as a credible scientific peer alongside and independent of the MSL team.
• Lead identification, mapping, and tiering of KOLs and high-impact primary care and community clinicians across smoking cessation and nicotine dependence.
• Co-own the medical insights process - ensuring field intelligence is captured systematically and translated into actionable input for clinical, commercial, and regulatory functions.
• Translate field insights into actionable recommendations that influence Medical Affairs strategy, evidence generation, publications, and launch planning.
• Build the field medical infrastructure needed to support the product candidate's launch and future indications.
• Possess deep, current understanding of the therapy area, the product, and the landscape – serving as a scientific resource for their own team and internal colleagues.
• Partner cross-functionally with medical, commercial, and clinical teams to ensure field medical is integrated into launch planning from day one.
• Contribute to onboarding, training, and equipping the field team with compliant, scientifically accurate resources.
• Partner with Medical Information and Commercial to ensure consistent scientific support across launch activities.
• Own field compliance standards and be accountable for the team's adherence to all relevant regulatory and industry guidelines governing scientific exchange.
• Ensure every MSL has the scientific knowledge, approved resources, and interaction skills needed for fair-balanced, non-promotional engagement with HCPs.
• Embed a culture of compliance from day one - this is a pre-launch team being built from scratch, and the standards set now carry through launch and beyond.

Qualifications And Education

• PharmD, MD, or PhD in a relevant scientific discipline required; candidates with a master's degree and substantial field medical leadership experience will be considered.
• 8+ years in Medical Affairs at a pharmaceutical or biotech company, with meaningful field medical leadership experience.
• Demonstrated track record of recruiting, hiring, building, scaling and managing MSL teams.
• Strong scientific credibility and ability to engage at a high level with KOLs and academic clinicians as well as community-based practitioners.
• Hands-on familiarity with MSL excellence standards, compliant scientific exchange, and field insights processes.
• Preferably, experience in smoking cessation, nicotine dependence, or an adjacent therapeutic area.