Senior Manager, External Innovation

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and manage active external collaborations, ensuring delivery against scientific objectives, timelines, and contractual commitments.
• Drive collaboration governance, including meeting leadership, milestone tracking, and issue resolution.
• Ensure alignment between scientific activities and contractual terms.
• Translate scientific discussions into clear deliverables, action plans, and next steps.
• Conduct S&E of external opportunities including novel therapeutics, platforms, models, and consortia.
• Develop competitive and technology landscapes across priority therapeutic areas.
• Identify and cultivate relationships with external experts and key opinion leaders (KOLs).
• Prioritize opportunities for diligence using scientific and strategic criteria.
• Provide scientific and strategic input into collaboration workplans and external opportunities.
• Partner cross-functionally to align external activities with internal program and portfolio strategy.
• Ensure external innovation activities support both near-term execution and long-term portfolio growth.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree with 5+ years of biotech/pharma industry experience. PhD preferred.
• Direct experience independently managing external collaborations in a biotechnology or pharmaceutical industry setting.
• Strong scientific expertise in neurology with an interest in exploring other therapeutic areas.
• Demonstrated ability to critically evaluate novel technologies and platforms, particularly in the neurodegeneration space.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate complex scientific ideas.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively collaborate with cross-functional colleagues and engage senior stakeholders in a global matrixed environment.
• Ability to build and maintain effective working relationships with internal stakeholders and external partners.
• Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on alliance management with proactive opportunity identification.