Senior Director, Clinical Strategy and Operational Excellence

AAVantgarde is a fast-growing clinical-stage biotech company innovating cutting edge research and development to advance gene therapies for rare diseases. As we expand, we are looking for a Senior Director, Clinical Strategy and Operational Excellence to join our team and enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the CMO’s office. This is a broad role with flexible scope and potential to shape the position overtime. The initial focus of the candidate will be to act as a trusted advisor and a strategic project manager/leader responsible for coordinating cross functional initiatives, ensuring alignment across teams, manage team finances and budget and be a key liaison between the CMO and her team as well as key internal and external stakeholders. This role requires a dynamic individual with exceptional organizational, analytical, and leadership skills. The Role This role will report to the Chief Medical Officer. This individual will serve as a business partner across the Clinical and Medical departments to understand clinical and operational needs based on business and project requirements. You will collaborate with colleagues to support the design, implementation, execution, management and improvement of processes flexing and adapting to diverse working styles. You will be confident to deal with unexpected challenges and business needs outside your core experience. While you may not always have the immediate answer, you will know the appropriate questions to ask and work with teams to identify solutions and paths forward. Responsibilities Strategic Support & Advisory • Partner with the CMO team to define, prioritize, and drive key initiatives aligned with the company’s clinical and business objectives. • Provide insights, analysis, and recommendations to support decision-making and organizational alignment. Operational Leadership • Manage the day-to-day operations of the CMO’s office, ensuring seamless execution of activities. • Drive project management efforts, tracking milestones, deliverables, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for clinical and medical affairs initiatives. • Facilitate cross-departmental collaboration to ensure alignment on timelines, goals, and resource allocation. • Represent the CMO in key internal meetings, synthesizing and relaying critical information. Finance & Budget Oversight • Collaborate with the Finance team to oversee budgets for clinical operations, medical affairs, and associated clinical development functions. • Monitor budget performance, identify variances, and develop action plans to ensure financial alignment with organizational goals. • Support the CMO in evaluating resource needs and making data-driven recommendations for budget allocation. • Develop and track financial forecasts, ensuring alignment with cross-functional project plans and priorities. • Partner with department headsto optimize spending efficiency while maintaining high standards of operational excellence. Communications & Stakeholder Engagement • Serve as the primary liaison between the CMO and internal teams, external partners, and stakeholders, ensuring clear and consistent communication. • Draft executive presentations, reports, and correspondence for internal and external audiences, Italian language translations (if needed), including the Board of Directors, regulatory agencies, and key partners. • Develop and execute communication strategies to articulate the CMO’s vision and priorities effectively. Leadership Team Coordination • Partner with CMO Leadership Team to ensure alignment across leadership initiatives. • Foster a culture of accountability, transparency, and innovation across the clinical development team. Special Projects • Lead or support high-priority special projects and initiatives as assigned by the CMO. • Conduct research and analysis on emerging trends, competitor activity, and regulatory developments in the biotech and pharmaceutical landscape. Skills and Capabilities • Thrives in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, bringing energy, pace and a strong bias for action while maintaining high standards of quality and follow-through. • Able to project manage across concurrent clinical development programs, integrating cross-functional workstreams, dependencies, milestones and competing priorities to keep both programs on track. • Comfortable moving seamlessly between strategic and detailed execution: translates CMO priorities into clear actions, secures inputs, follows up proactively, anticipates bottlenecks and escalates risks early. • Operates with a high degree of autonomy, urgency and discretion; is comfortable working with incomplete information, adapting rapidly as priorities evolve and ensuring critical CMO and team deliverables are completed on time. • Possesses a solution-oriented mindset with a structured yet creative approach to problem solving, often operating to demanding deadlines or urgent requests. • Highly organized with ability to manage multiple priorities simultaneously and deliver the most critical assignments on time and within budget. • Demonstrates excellent written and oral communication skills, articulating ideas clearly and concisely. • Develops well-structured and high-impact materials (including recommendations and business cases); presenting to diverse audiences and/or lead meetings that may include senior stakeholder groups. • Strong interpersonal skills and proven ability to develop effective working relationships across all levels of the organization. Education and Experience • Bachelor’s degree minimum; advanced degree in life sciences, business, project/program management or a related discipline is advantageous. • Significant experience in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals or another complex, fast-paced environment, with experience in a clinical-stage or emerging biotech strongly preferred. Experience managing a team and leading project delivery, creating project plans and understanding dependencies across the functions and projects. • Demonstrated experience leading complex, cross-functional programs with multiple concurrent workstreams, ideally supporting more than one clinical development program. • Strong track record of end-to-end project and program management, including development of integrated plans, identification of dependencies, milestone and deliverable tracking, risk management and proactive escalation. • Experience working directly with senior executives, with the judgement, discretion and confidence to manage priorities on their behalf and drive follow-through across senior stakeholders. • Demonstrated ability to manage an executive-level deliverables portfolio/calendar, spanning granular activities such as review and contribution to key documents through to strategic milestones, governance meetings and Board/investor deliverables. • Experience coordinating activities across Clinical Development, Clinical Operations, Biometrics, Medical Affairs, Regulatory and other relevant functions is highly desirable. • Experience with budget management, forecasting and resource planning, preferably within clinical development. • Demonstrated ability to produce high-quality executive materials and synthesize complex information into clear recommendations, decisions and actions. • Track record of operating effectively in a lean, rapidly evolving organization, taking ownership and delivering with pace, accuracy and limited supervision. Equal Opportunities At AAVantgarde, we are committed to fostering a welcoming, collaborative, and inclusive environment. We believe in providing equal opportunities for all and do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or any other legally protected characteristics. All applicants will receive equal consideration for employment. Recruitment Policy AAVantgarde’s HR team leads all recruitment activities for AAVantgarde globally. AAVantgarde will not recognise any notional ownership recruitment companies claim to hold over candidates they present directly to hiring managers without the AAVantgarde HR team’s consent, nor any fees the recruitment company may feel are due as a result of this. Unsolicited resumes sent to AAVantgarde from recruiters do not constitute any type of relationship between the recruiter and AAVantgarde and do not obligate AAVantgarde to pay fees should we hire from those resumes. We ask that external recruiters and/or agencies not contact or present candidates directly to our hiring managers or employees. If you are interested in becoming a recruitment partner please email the HR team at recruitment@aavantgarde.com