Customer Strategy & Operations Director, Clinical Trials

About the role: The Customer Strategy & Operations Director, Clinical Trials owns the design, launch, delivery, and improvement of assigned clinical trial programs. You will be the operational partner to clients and the person who keeps cross-functional work on track. This is a hands-on role spanning client success, program operations, site engagement, implementation, and performance reporting.

What you'll do: Program strategy and execution

• Own program plans from kickoff through closeout, including scope, milestones, dependencies, risks, decisions, and deliverables.
• Coordinate multiple concurrent workstreams across patient engagement, mentor recruitment, marketing, product, compliance, and reporting teams.
• Establish clear ownership, meeting cadences, action tracking, escalation paths, and leadership updates.
• Improve playbooks and workflows for program design, mentor matching, onboarding, communications, and reporting. Client success and implementation
• Serve as a strategic and operational point of contact for sponsors and other client stakeholders.
• Lead onboarding, kickoff, status, and closeout discussions; document expectations and follow through on commitments.
• Understand each study's goals, patient population, recruitment challenges, site needs, and measures of success.
• Build repeatable launch materials, checklists, and procedures; remove blockers that threaten readiness or quality.
• Identify opportunities to strengthen or expand partnerships based on program results and client needs. Site and mentor engagement
• Lead site communications and escalations, support site activation, and follow up on readiness and participation barriers.
• Capture site feedback and work with internal and sponsor teams to improve the experience.
• Partner with recruitment and community teams on mentor profiles, screening criteria, staffing needs, activation, and quality.
• Recognize and promptly route safety concerns and potential adverse events to designated clinical, sponsor, and compliance contacts under the applicable protocol and reporting procedures. Reporting and improvement
• Define KPIs and reporting cadences with clients and internal leaders.
• Monitor launch readiness, mentor recruitment, patient engagement, match activity, utilization, timelines, satisfaction, and retention.
• Produce accurate client-ready reports, executive summaries, insights, and recommendations.
• Use data and feedback to diagnose issues, improve programs, and support renewal and expansion planning. What you'll bring
• 10+ years in customer success, program management, clinical trial operations, patient engagement, healthcare operations, life sciences services, or a closely related field.
• Experience leading complex client-facing programs with multiple stakeholders, timelines, and deliverables.
• Strong understanding of clinical trial operations, patient recruitment or engagement, site and sponsor dynamics, or life sciences programs. Site engagement experience is preferred.
• Working knowledge of adverse event reporting, clinical trial compliance, patient safety, and appropriate escalation with sites, sponsors, and clinical stakeholders.
• A record of launching and running new programs or partnerships, building processes, and improving execution in a growing organization.
• Strong project management, analytical, documentation, and executive communication skills.
• Ability to turn the voice of the customer and program data into product and service improvements and clear business value.
• Comfort with evolving priorities, strong attention to detail, and reliable follow-through.
• Experience with CRM, project management, reporting, and collaboration tools is preferred.
• Bachelor's degree required; an advanced degree in business, public health, healthcare administration, life sciences, or a related field is preferred.

What success looks like: Programs launch on time with clear scope and ownership. Clients receive proactive communication and useful reporting. Sites and internal teams know what is needed and when. Program insights drive ongoing improvement, renewal readiness, and a scalable clinical trial operating model.

Patient: Partner is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome candidates of every background and do not discriminate on any basis protected by law.