Vice President, Life Sciences Commercial Solutions

About the role

We are hiring a senior leader to own and scale the Commercial business at Saama. This is a build-and-scale mandate, not a caretaker role. Saama has established credibility, platform assets, and enterprise relationships on the clinical side; the commercial side has strong foundations and significant room to grow.

Responsibilities

• Define and continuously sharpen Saama's commercial analytics and AI portfolio what Solutions we build, what we deliver as services, and where we partner.

• Translate pharma commercial business problems into repeatable offerings, accelerators, and reference architectures rather than one-off custom builds.

• Own the offering roadmap in partnership with Product, Engineering, and Data Science, including build-vs-buy calls, pricing and packaging constructs, and the business case for each investment.

• Maintain a differentiated point of view on the competitive set the large SIs, the specialist analytics firms, and the data and platform vendors and position Saama credibly against them.

• Partner with account executives and client partners as the domain and solution lead on enterprise pursuits: shaping opportunities, running discovery, designing the solution, building the pricing model, and defending the approach with the client.

• Lead responses to RFPs, RFIs, and unsolicited proposals; own the technical and domain narrative in orals and final presentations.

• Support analyst and market-facing positioning (Everest Group, ISG, HFS and similar), conference presence, and thought leadership that generates qualified demand.

• Serve as the senior domain leader on delivery not a figurehead. You will be in working sessions, reviewing solution designs, resolving escalations, and making judgment calls where the domain and the data are ambiguous.

• Own delivery quality, client satisfaction, compliance and referenceability across the commercial portfolio.

• Structure engagements for scalability reusable assets, onshore/offshore delivery models, and margin discipline.

• Build, mentor, and retain a multi-disciplinary team of consultants, solution architects, domain SMEs, and analytics leaders across US and global delivery centers.

• Establish the operating cadence pipeline reviews, capacity planning, capability development, and hiring plans required to scale the business predictably.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in consulting and delivery within life sciences, with a majority focused on pharmaceutical/biotech commercial functions.

• Practice leader, principal, partner, or business unit leader experience at a consultancy, SI, analytics firm, or life sciences software company.

• Deep, demonstrable subject-matter expertise across a meaningful span of the commercial spectrum.

• Strong candidates typically have real depth in several of:

  • Sales force operations incentive compensation design and administration, goal setting, alignment, call planning, sales reporting, field analytics
  • Market access and managed care rebate analytics, formulary strategy, GPO/IDN contracting, payer analytics, pull-through programs
  • Marketing and omnichannel brand analytics, HCP targeting, campaign measurement, EHR/eRx programs, MLR workflow
  • Patient services and hub operations support program design, hub and specialty pharmacy analytics, adherence
  • Commercial data platforms IQVIA, Symphony/ICON, Komodo, claims and specialty pharmacy data, CRM/CLM, MDM, data governance, and transparency/compliance reporting (Sunshine Act / Open Payments)

• A track record of selling: personally led or materially drove multi-million-dollar engagements to close, including pre-sales solutioning, pricing, and executive-level negotiation.

• Experience leading delivery organizations at meaningful scale 40+ practitioners, distributed teams, multiple concurrent Fortune 500 clients.

• Applied fluency in modern AI and analytics: LLMs, RAG, agentic patterns, and the practical realities of deploying them in a regulated, validated pharma environment.

• You should be able to challenge a solution architecture, not just approve a slide about one.

• Executive presence with the ability to hold a room of pharma senior leaders and be recognized as a peer.

• Bachelor's degree required; MBA or advanced degree preferred.

• Preferred: Prior P&L ownership for a practice, business unit, or offering portfolio.

• Experience building a commercial practice inside an organization whose center of gravity was elsewhere clinical, R&D, or technology.

• Published thought leadership, analyst panel participation, or recognized industry speaking in commercial pharma forums (PMSA, CBI, Fierce Pharma, peer-reviewed journals).

• Experience across therapeutic areas with distinct commercial models oncology, rare disease, specialty, CNS, immunology.

How Success Will Be Measured

• First 90 days: portfolio and pipeline diagnostic complete; refreshed offering thesis and investment priorities agreed with leadership; active engagement in at least two live pursuits; delivery relationships established with top accounts.

• First 12 months: defined and launched offering portfolio with supporting assets and pricing; measurable bookings growth against target; at least one new logo won; delivery quality and client reference position improved in flagship accounts; hiring plan executed against.

• 24 months: Commercial Solutions & Services operating as a self-sustaining, margin-positive business with a repeatable sales motion, a named leadership bench, and market recognition as a credible alternative to the incumbent providers.