Senior Director, Marketing New Product Planning

About the Role

Akebia is seeking a strategic, collaborative, and analytically driven Senior Director of New Product Planning to support the advancement and commercialization planning of Akebia’s pipeline programs. This individual will play a critical role in shaping development and commercialization strategies by leading commercial assessments, generating actionable market insights, and providing strategic guidance to cross-functional program teams across the product lifecycle.

The Senior Director will serve as the commercial lead for pipeline opportunities, partnering closely with R&D, Medical Affairs, Business Development, Regulatory, Commercial, and Executive Leadership to inform key decisions related to target product profiles, development prioritization, competitive differentiation, launch planning, and lifecycle strategy.

The ideal candidate is a highly strategic and execution-oriented leader with strong business acumen, exceptional cross-functional leadership capabilities, and deep experience translating market insights into actionable commercial recommendations in a fast-paced biotech environment. This role reports to the Vice President of Marketing.

Responsibilities

• Lead and execute commercial assessment activities for pipeline assets, business development opportunities, and the anemia market, including market sizing, competitive landscape evaluations, opportunity assessments, and commercial risk analyses.
• Lead and maintain comprehensive disease area and competitive intelligence to identify market trends, unmet needs, and emerging competitive threats/opportunities.
• Identify knowledge gaps and create detailed plans to address them through KOL engagement and market research.
• Serve as the commercial representative on cross-functional program teams, providing strategic input to inform target product profiles, clinical development, regulatory, and commercialization strategies.
• Partner with Clinical Development and Medical Affairs to shape positioning strategies, value proposition development, evidence generation priorities, patient identification, and patient advocacy.
• Understand and communicate requirements for market access, reimbursement, and differentiation to ensure successful commercialization of pipeline assets.
• Inform the development of forecast assumptions for financial models.
• Partner closely with Business Development and Corporate Strategy teams to evaluate external innovation opportunities and support diligence activities, where applicable.
• Effectively manage external vendors and consultants to ensure high-quality deliverables within scope, budget, and timelines.
• Contribute to a collaborative, mission-driven culture focused on delivering meaningful outcomes for patients.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree required; advanced degree preferred (MBA, PharmD, PhD, MPH, or equivalent).
• Minimum of 10 years in the pharmaceutical or biotech industry and 8+ years of proven experience inclusive of new product planning, commercial strategy, and brand management.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical product development, commercialization, market access, and competitive strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority and operate effectively in cross-functional program teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in nephrology, rare disease, or specialty therapeutics preferred.
• Proven ability to synthesize complex clinical and market information into actionable business recommendations.
• Strong analytical, communication, and presentation skills.
• Highly collaborative, proactive, and adaptable with strong project management skills.
• Ability to travel up to 15% for internal meetings, customer engagement, and medical congresses.

Pay

Base compensation for this role will depend on a number of factors including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience, and may fall outside of the range shown. Targeted base salary: $256,730 – $317,138 USD.

Base pay is only one component of the company’s total rewards package. All regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or the incentive compensation program (if applicable), as well as equity. Additional benefits include health care, vision, dental, retirement, and PTO.

About Akebia

Nearly 37 million Americans are currently affected by Chronic Kidney Disease. At Akebia, we take that number very seriously and come to work every day with the purpose of bettering the lives of each person impacted by kidney disease and the renal community that serves them. Our tenacious, passionate employees challenge the status quo and work to develop unique therapeutics that have the potential to set new standards of care for people living with kidney disease.

An Akebian is curious, empathetic, and values making connections to people and ideas. Akebians aren’t afraid of diving in and owning a process or a problem because we all want to deliver a great solution. Akebians believe that we are better together because we are all working toward a common purpose—to better the life of each person impacted by kidney disease.