Job Description

Driving change in the pharmaceutical industry — Lead Experience Design Strategy (Digital × Data × AI)

As the Experience Design Strategy Lead within the Digital & Data Enablement Unit, you will strengthen organizational capability and lead human-centered experience design for patients, healthcare professionals and field teams (e.g., MRs). Working closely with squads and commercial teams, you will champion a co-creation process from research and prototyping through to implementation, and drive adoption of new ways of working through initiatives that leverage AI, digital and data alongside robust change management. 

【Key Role & Responsibilities】 

1. Experience Design (CX/UX) SME

• Act as the internal Subject Matter Expert for Experience Design, advising on solution and tool selection and reviewing design decisions to maximize value and improve user experience from a design perspective. 

• Develop the organization’s design capabilities through training programs and knowledge‑sharing to raise overall skill levels. 

• Run cross‑organizational design reviews and quality gates to ensure consistency and quality of outputs. 
  

2. People leadership

• Oversee people development and coaching (including regular 1:1s), specialist skill and career support, and performance & remuneration processes. 

• Define hiring strategy, participate in interviews, own onboarding plans, and manage external/contracted partners (contracts, resourcing). 

• Create skills maps and succession plans based on workforce planning. 
  

3. Design standardization and operations

• Define, maintain and govern design standards, processes, templates and component libraries. 

• Define localization policies for global design assets and lead their adoption internally. 

• Establish governance for the global design system (application criteria and operational standards). 
  

4. Delivering experience strategy through Digital × Data × AI integration

• Design customer-/user‑centered experiences aligned to digital, data and AI strategies; define and operate KPIs that reflect user perspectives to drive outcomes and continuously optimize performance. 

• Partner with IT and data teams on an omnichannel basis to implement measurement frameworks, run A/B tests and perform behavioral analysis, using data‑driven validation to improve UX. 

• Support execution of digital marketing tactics (campaign design, content strategy, MA utilization, personalization) and integration with MarTech. 

5. Product co-creation and validation (prototype → validate → improve)

• Co‑create with squads and commercial teams to deliver UX design, prototypes, user testing and A/B testing to validate initiatives and scale successful solutions. 

• Build decision‑making processes that combine quantitative (behavioral data, KPIs) and qualitative (user interviews) evidence. 

• Drive UX‑led business process design and IT implementation (requirements definition → functional design → development → testing) across teams and support handover to operations. 

6. Change management and culture building

• Standardize design methods and tools, and create user‑centric guides and working environments to support adoption and sustainment. 

• Lead change management efforts to promote data‑driven decision making using digital tools and AI. 

• Communicate outcomes and learnings through storytelling, and embed new practices by running cycles of pilot → learning → roll‑out. 
  

7. Hands‑on contribution within squads and projects

• Participate in squads and projects, applying your expertise to drive backlog tasks and deliverables. 

• Surface and synthesize operational issues through hands‑on engagement and support execution of remediation actions. 

【Required experience & professional skills】

• Proven experience leading a design team or function, including people development, regular 1:1s, performance management, hiring and workforce planning. 

• Experience introducing and embedding Experience Design (HCD) in an organization, or strategically operating an ExD team. 

• Experience designing and delivering strategies that leverage digital, data and AI, and translating them into roadmaps and customer/user experience operations. 

• Track record of overseeing system implementation projects and designing/executing user‑facing change management. 

• Practical experience in business process design and IT solutions (requirements definition → functional design → development → testing). 

• Experience in digital marketing tactics through to operations, and familiarity with MarTech (CMS / MA / SFA / CDP etc.). 

• Proven ability to align and influence complex stakeholders across business, IT, data, global teams and external partners to achieve consensus. 

• High professional proficiency in Japanese (ability to communicate, prepare and review materials for internal and external stakeholders). 

• Business‑level English (written and spoken). 

Leadership / behavioral competencies (expected)

• Vision orientation : able to articulate strategic direction that links customer value to business goals. 

• Coaching mindset : committed to team growth through 1:1s and development activities. 

• Influence & alignment : able to bring diverse stakeholders on board and drive consensus. 

• Change agent : able to lead adoption of new working practices and data‑driven culture across the organization. 

• Ownership & decisiveness : able to prioritize and act in ambiguous situations. 

• Communication & storytelling : able to explain complex strategies and outcomes clearly to drive behavior change. 

Required Skills:

Acquisitions Divestitures, Acquisitions Divestitures, Agile Leadership, Business Decisions, Business English, Business-IT Alignment, Business Processes, Customer Experience Design, Customer Value Management, Employee Performance Evaluations, Environmental Scanning, Feasibility Studies, Financial Analysis, Forecasting Models, Growth Mindset, Marketing Automation, Marketing Campaign Development, Operations Analysis, Organizational Capability, Organizational Performance Management, People Leadership, Pharmaceutical Management, Program Implementation, Project Implementations, Resource Management {+ 4 more}

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

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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. 

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