Sr. Director, External Research and Development Operations (Biologics)

The Role

The Senior Director will report to the VP of ERAD Operations and be responsible, as part of the External R&D and Partnering team (ERAD), for helping ensure our portfolio companies have access to the absolute best vendors to support them in delivering on their seed milestones. In this role, you will be a part of the connective tissue between our CSO pods that act as co-pilots to our portfolio companies and our external network of vendor partners and CROs. Internally, you will ensure our Co-Piloting team and portfolio companies have a white glove working relationship with the top strategic vendors. Externally, you will help build a best in class network of vendors who we treat as long term partners, not transactional order takers. Our ideal candidate is excited by the breadth (majority of modalities/indications), scale, and stage (primarily discovery) of our portfolio.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with the Curie CSO Co-Pilot from planning to execution ensuring our internal scientific teams and portfolio companies have white glove access to the best external vendors. 
• Support and help optimize vendor outreach processes - from gathering ballpark costs, to RFPs, to memo creation, negotiation, contracting as well as escalating material execution issues that come up along the way
• Support and help optimize the process of managing, executing and tracking CRO-associated agreements (e.g., SOW, MSA, NDA, etc.). 
• Be able to clearly communicate the value proposition of CROs as well as their positioning in the market to internal stakeholders and portfolio companies including which scientific capabilities are typically commoditised and which are cutting edge or rare/difficult to access acting as a guide for founders 
• On specific technology, you are able to access/synthesize/analyze details across the market and then prepare a technical/scientific evaluation memo to support Founders with making the optimum CRO selection
• Help to ensure our strategic vendor partners actually feel like partners. Build a long term relationship with win-win dynamics vs. treating them as a one-off transactional service provider. We want the best teams at the top vendors, which requires building and maintaining deep relationships, trust, and high levels of accountability to ensure both sides deliver on the partnership.
• Help support and continuously develop the processes for maintenance / improvement of the ERAD data collection and knowledge management and contribute to the development/improvements of fit-for-purpose tools. Help manage all CRO-associated presentations, documents and information.
• Help to design, build, and constantly improve the process and infrastructure required to do this at a serious scale. 

 Requirements and Qualifications

• PhD in Biology or related field with experience in the pharmaceutical or life science industry, ideally as a project lead 
• At least 10 years experience in Alliance/Vendor/CRO Management or related function with increasing levels of responsibility and demonstrated success in managing external relationships, ideally with discovery stage experience 
• Prior experience or exposure to business development (as part of deal teams for example or through selection and contract negotiations with CROs/CDMOs) is a distinct advantage
• Familiarity with legal agreements in the biopharmaceutical field
• Experience in establishing processes that scale - defining "playbooks" and managing across multiple functions and stakeholders
• Excellent interpersonal skills with ability to negotiate, persuade, resolve conflict, and manage through significant ambiguity and complexity
• Experience managing geographically diverse partners and adaptability towards cultural differences
• Ability to travel 10-40% of the time depending on need

The People:

In order for Curie.Bio to achieve its mission, we need the best people. Companies are nothing more than a group of people working together on a shared objective. Great companies are when those individuals come together to form something larger than the sum of its parts.  By design, Curie.Bio is a flat organization to better serve the Founders and portfolio companies.  

The Company:

Curie.Bio is a founder-focused, early-stage venture firm combined with an industry-grade therapeutics accelerator focused on one thing: helping entrepreneurial founders launch viable therapeutics companies. Curie.Bio does this by giving founders access to a team of the world’s best drug hunters and drug makers, seed capital, and best-of-breed services - everything a founder needs to get from concept to a compelling dataset that enables an awesome Series A financing and more. In a nutshell, we want founders focused on their area of expertise and creativity, while we help make the rest happen smoothly.

We manage two funds: the Seed Fund and the Breakout Fund. The Seed Fund focuses on advancing therapies through preclinical milestones, such as achieving in vivo proof-of-concept or selecting a development candidate. The Breakout Fund focuses on advancing medicines through clinical trials to generate impactful human activity data.

As an employee joining us on this mission, you will see first hand what it takes to successfully bring a company from concept at the seed stage to compelling wet-lab derived POC data with an industry-grade progressible drug (candidate) that enables a Series A financing and beyond. You will work alongside the world’s best drug hunters and industry veterans whose experience spans all facets of drug discovery and preclinical drug development - from disease biology to medicinal chemistry, to recruiting, to business development, and more.