JD: Vice President, Life Sciences Commercial Solutions
Company: Saama Technologies, Inc.
Location: Remote (US) — preference for NJ/NY/PA, Boston, Philadelphia, or SF Bay Area; ~30–40% travel to client sites
Employment type: Full-time
About Saama
Saama is an AI and advanced analytics company built for life sciences. Best known for the AI-powered clinical platform that supported the trial behind the world''s first COVID-19 vaccine, Saama works with many of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and a large base of emerging biotechs. Alongside our clinical development portfolio, we operate a growing Commercial business — spanning commercial data platforms, master data management, advanced BI, and our Analytics for Commercial Excellence (ACE) solution family — serving marketing, sales, market access, and patient services organizations.
We are hiring a senior leader to own and scale that Commercial business.
The opportunity
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. You will define what Saama sells to pharma commercial organizations, help win it, and stand behind the delivery.
The role sits at the intersection of three things: offering and IP definition, enterprise selling alongside a quota-carrying sales team, and hands-on credibility as the domain authority inside the delivery team. You will be the person a pharma VP of Commercial Operations or a Chief Data Officer wants in the room — first to shape the agenda, then to be accountable for the outcome.
What you will own
1. Offering and solution definition
● 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.
● Set the AI agenda for the practice: agentic workflows, LLM/RAG-based solutions, and ML applied to field force effectiveness, market access, omnichannel engagement, patient services, and commercial data foundations.
● 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.
2. Revenue growth with the sales organization
● 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.
● Build and hold senior client relationships independently — Commercial Operations, Commercial IT/Digital, Market Access, Brand, Patient Services, and Data & Analytics leadership.
● Carry accountability for bookings and revenue targets for the Commercial portfolio; expand existing accounts and open new logos across large pharma, mid-cap biopharma, and emerging biotech.
● Support analyst and market-facing positioning (Everest Group, ISG, HFS and similar), conference presence, and thought leadership that generates qualified demand.
3. Consultative delivery leadership
● 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.
● Ensure solutions actually land: adoption, change management, and measurable business impact for the client, not just deployed technology.
● Structure engagements for scalability — reusable assets, onshore/offshore delivery models, and margin discipline.
4. Practice leadership
● 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.
What you bring
Required
● 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. You can point to specific deals and your role in them.
● 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.
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