Associate Director, Competitive Intelligence

Job Description

Associate Director, Competitive Intelligence | Neurocrine Biosciences

The Tone:
This is a full-time role at Neurocrine Biosciences, located in San Diego, California, USA. Neurocrine Biosciences is a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing and commercializing treatments for underserved neurological, psychiatric, endocrine, and immunological disorders. This role is crucial for advancing the company’s competitive intelligence capabilities, providing strategic insights to inform critical decisions across the commercial portfolio, clinical pipeline, research programs, and external innovation activities. The Associate Director will help identify emerging competitive threats and opportunities, anticipate competitor actions, and support earlier, better-informed strategic choices.

The TL;DR
• Role: Full Time
• Type: Full-time
• Location: In-person – San Diego, California, USA
• Pay: $171800–$235000 yearly
• Mission: To advance Neurocrine’s competitive intelligence capability, providing strategic insights and recommendations to inform portfolio decisions, business development, R&D strategy, and commercial execution.
• Tech Stack: Modern AI tools, large language models, AI-enabled research and analytical tools.

What You’ll Actually Do
• Develop Initiatives: Contribute to the development and lead execution of competitive intelligence initiatives across marketed products, development-stage assets, research programs, and emerging strategic areas.
• Provide Strategic Counsel: Deliver strategic competitive intelligence and counsel to senior leaders and cross-functional teams, translating complex scientific, clinical, regulatory, and commercial information into clear insights and recommendations.
• Identify & Assess: Identify emerging competitors, mechanisms, technologies, and market developments, then assess their potential implications for Neurocrine’s portfolio and business strategy.
• Guide Decisions: Develop competitor and asset-level scenarios, including likely clinical-development strategies, regulatory paths, launch timing, and commercial potential, to inform portfolio and business development decisions.
• Advance CI Capabilities: Contribute to the development of an AI-enabled competitive intelligence capability, using modern tools like large language models to increase the breadth, speed, and depth of analysis for signal detection and synthesis.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Bachelor’s degree in life sciences, business, or a related discipline, with a deep understanding of drug discovery and development, clinical trials, regulatory pathways, and commercialization processes.
• Experience: 10+ years of relevant pharmaceutical, biotechnology, competitive intelligence, corporate strategy, business development, consulting, or investment research experience (or 8+ years with a Master’s/MBA, or 6+ years with a PhD/PharmD/MD). Demonstrated hands-on proficiency with modern generative AI tools and experience incorporating AI into day-to-day analytical workflows.
• Skills: Ability to synthesize scientific, clinical, regulatory, commercial, market access, financial, and competitive information into differentiated strategic insights and recommendations; strong analytical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills; excellent written and verbal communication, including for senior audiences; demonstrated ability to influence decisions without direct authority and effectively challenge assumptions.
• Bonus: Experience managing external partners and vendors, and a demonstrated tendency to ask “what does this mean?” and “what happens next?” rather than simply summarizing past events.