Director, Commercial Data - Animal Health

Job Description

The Customer MDM Business Lead is accountable for the business side of Customer Master Data Management.

The role owns the business leadership required to make Customer MDM effective across the Commercial organization, translating Commercial strategy, market needs, and business priorities into master data requirements, governance decisions, adoption plans, and measurable business value. It requires a leader who can work across global, regional, and market stakeholders, manage significant dependencies, and keep the organization focused on practical outcomes: trusted customer data, clear decision rights, market readiness, and value realization.

Key Responsibilities

Business Partnership & Strategy

• Serve as the primary business lead and strategic partner for Customer MDM across the Commercial organization.
• Translate Commercial strategy, business priorities, and market needs into clear customer master data requirements.
• Build alignment across global, regional, and market stakeholders to support decision-making, funding, prioritization, and adoption.

Customer Data Governance & Quality

• Define and maintain business rules, policies, standards, and decision rights for customer master data.
• Establish data quality expectations, KPIs, and business controls to ensure customer data is trusted and fit for use.
• Drive data quality at the source by clarifying accountability in systems of record and upstream business processes.
• Chair the Customer Data Governance Council and use it to drive decisions, issue resolution, prioritization, and escalation where needed.

Business Process Ownership & Value Realization

• Act as the business process owner for Customer MDM, ensuring that processes, ownership, governance, and technology capabilities work together.
• Define and communicate the business value of quality customer data, including sales force effectiveness, commercial execution, marketing campaign accuracy, customer engagement, reporting and analytics, and customer satisfaction.
• Prioritize markets, business units, and use cases based on ROI, commercial impact, data readiness, and organizational readiness.

Change Management & Market Readiness

• Lead global change management and market readiness for Customer MDM rollout and continuous improvement.
• Act as business sponsor for adoption, alignment, and sustained usage of Customer MDM capabilities.
• Coordinate readiness activities with markets and business units, including stakeholder engagement, communication, business validation, training needs, and adoption feedback.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner with Commercial, IT, Data & Analytics, Privacy, Compliance, Legal, and regional teams to ensure Customer MDM supports business objectives, regulatory expectations, and appropriate handling of consent, retention, access, and data usage questions.
• Translate dependency and decision needs across business, data, technology, privacy, and compliance stakeholders so issues are resolved at the right level.
• Escalate privacy, compliance, legal, or policy decisions to the appropriate accountable owners while ensuring Customer MDM requirements and processes reflect agreed guidance.

Role Requirements

• Stakeholder leadership experience: Proven ability to build trusted relationships across global, regional, market, Commercial, IT, Privacy, Compliance, and Data & Analytics stakeholders, including engagement with both sponsors and working teams.
• Master Data Management expertise: Deep understanding of master data management principles, governance models, data quality practices, stewardship frameworks, and customer data lifecycle management.
• Commercial domain knowledge: Strong understanding of commercial business processes, including customer engagement, sales operations, marketing, CRM, territory management, and commercial analytics.
• Governance and decision-making leadership: Experience leading cross-functional governance forums, driving alignment, resolving conflicts, and establishing clear decision rights across stakeholder groups.
• Business and data understanding: Strong ability to connect business process, data ownership, source-system behavior, governance requirements, and adoption dynamics to identify root causes and practical solutions.
• Business transformation experience: Proven experience leading enterprise-scale transformations involving process standardization, organizational change, technology adoption, and operating model evolution.
• Value realization mindset: Ability to define business outcomes, establish measurable success metrics, and demonstrate ROI from data and process investments.
• Global influence and complexity management: Experience working across global, regional, and market organizations, balancing standardization with legitimate local needs and driving outcomes through influence in matrixed environments where direct authority is limited.
• Data and technology literacy: Strong understanding of CRM platforms, customer data ecosystems, analytics, integration concepts, and the role of MDM platforms.

Success Measures

• Clear and adopted business rules for customer master data.
• Improved data quality at source systems and reduced recurring data issues.
• Effective governance cadence with timely decisions and issue resolution.
• Market readiness plans in place for prioritized rollouts.
• Visible business value linked to commercial effectiveness, campaign accuracy, analytics readiness, and customer experience.
• Strong stakeholder alignment across Commercial, markets, IT, Data & Analytics, Privacy, Compliance, and Legal, with clear escalation paths for policy or regulatory decisions.

Minimum Required Education

• Bachelor's degree and 10+ years industry experience

Required Skills:

Brand Messaging, Business Metrics, Customer Data Management, Data Integrity, Digital Marketing, Direct Marketing, Financial Acumen, Global Leadership, Market Development, Operating Models, Pricing Strategies, Product Ownership, Strategic Alignment, Strategic Planning, Value Realization

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.  As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.  For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

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We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

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The primary location for this posting is:

USA - New Jersey - Rahway

Where required by law, the compensation range for this role is provided below.

The salary range for the primary location of this role is:

$190,800.00 - $300,300.00

This range reflects the Company's reasonable expectation of the base salary applicable to this role at the time of posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs. The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

Additional location(s): Please note the salary range above applies to the Primary Location of the position. Where a role has other listed locations, different compensation guidelines may apply. You may find the salary ranges for additional locations below. If the salary range is not listed for the location you are applying to, our Talent Acquisition team will provide further information to you relevant to your location.

Additional location(s) Compensation Information:

UK Salary Range - 81,900GBP to 139,200 GBP

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

N/A

Job Posting End Date:

10/26/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.