Medical Director / Rheumatology, Autoimmune Translational Medicine

This position is written for Director - we can hire Associate Director for those with careers that include less established science / clinical study experience. We support International family relocation and integration support to Switzerland.

What you’ll bring to the role:
• MD and Board certified Rheumatologist (or similar relevant sub-specialty clinical training with directly relevant patient experience) with PhD-level basic science. A completed relevant postdoctoral fellowship is strongly preferred
• Advanced / business-level / fluent English (oral and written)
• Recognized for your medical expertise: an experienced Clinician treating relevant patient groups at an academic medical center or private medical practice group
• Recognized for your scientific expertise: respected by colleagues internally and externally, you’ve made significant contributions to your field and created / established new concepts; you have a record of high quality publications in international scientific journals
• Experience designing and conducting early phase clinical trials including for inflammatory arthritis: either from pharma/biotech, a senior CRO role where you were responsible for the medical relationship and studies with Sponsors, or from a relevant academic medical center with co-PI ideally also PI clinical trial experience. 5+ years trial experience particularly in inflammatory arthritis preferred
• You are used to working independently and within teams including autoimmune disease research scientists and non-scientists on study planning and execution, demonstrating competence in a broad range of project and more strategic planning skills and leading complex cross-functional/matrix project teams

Your behavioural characteristics
• Demonstrated passion for treating patients and science
• Strategic thinker: you have created major innovations, networked with and influenced external medical leaders with your clear and logical presentation of complex strategic issues
• Results-driven self-starter and decision taker
• Strong cooperative team player, flexible in a changing environment
• Good planning, prioritisation, problem solving and organisational skills
• Resilient, energetic and enthusiastic; responding constructively to challenging new ideas and input

ABOUT TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE:
Translational Medicine is a global group of scientists and physicians working at the pre-clinical and early clinical stage of drug discovery. Our Physician-Scientists drive innovative and cutting-edge science through the selection, profiling and effective global development of successful medicines, integrating clinical science into the discovery and preclinical development phase. Our Translational Medicine concepts are driven by medical needs of patients and the concept of personalized medicine, tailoring the drug, dose and dosing regimen to the patient so the clinical response is optimal in efficacy and safety.

We focus from identification of drug targets (molecular pathways relevant to disease) up to the completion of Proof of Concept (Phase IIa studies). Our Translational Medicine Experts are part of preclinical project teams in all drug discovery phases and help design the pathway for First in Human studies (healthy volunteer) that bridge to studies in the patient population. They have the comprehensive responsibility for designing and executing the early clinical drug development phase with a project team including research, biomarkers, biostatistics, modeling & simulation, toxicology, technical experts and clinical trial teams.

Why Novartis?
766 million lives were touched by Novartis medicines in 2021, and while we’re proud of this, we know there is so much more we could do to help improve and extend people’s lives.
We believe new insights, perspectives and ground-breaking solutions can be found at the intersection of medical science and digital innovation. That a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment inspires new ways of working.