Associate Director, Marketing Excellence at Merck

Job Description:

Roles and Responsibilities

The Associate Director, Marketing Excellence partners closely with Business Units/Brand Team and cross functional team to sharpen brand marketing strategy, enhance market insights, strengthen data-driven decisions, and translate strategy into effective customer engagement and execution excellence.

1.

Marketing Excellence & Governance:

• Shape and refine the Marketing Excellence framework and the governance mechanisms that raise the quality of both strategy development and strategy execution.

• Partner with business teams to ensure strategies are sharp, focused, and grounded in facts, and that customer engagement plans are clearly linked to strategy and translated into high-quality execution.

• Use governance forums and review routines to strengthen assumptions, surface trade-offs, and track execution excellence, ensuring timely decisions and follow-through across functions.

2.

Capability Building & Best Practices:

• Translate the Marketing Excellence framework into practical ways of working through workshops, working sessions, and targeted capability building for brand and cross-functional teams.

• Build and continuously enrich internal and external benchmarks and best practices across key marketing topics & customer solutions, and convert them into clear guidance or practice that teams can apply.

• Strengthen marketing excellence by scaling proven approaches, case examples, and lessons learned across brands.

• Work closely with L&D team to develop Marketing Excellence training courses to cover key MEX topics

3.

Strategic Pilots & Growth Opportunity Enablement:

• Identify systematic business issues and high-potential growth opportunities that cut across brands, and define priority improvement areas.

• Pilot new approaches with selected brands to validate solutions, demonstrate impact, and turn opportunities into scalable models.

• Drive cross-functional implementation and follow-through to ensure successful pilots are embedded into business practice and translated into measurable results.

Requirements

Education / Professional Certificate:

• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s degree or MBA is a plus.

Working Experience:

• 8+ years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, with deep experience in strategic marketing, brand strategy, or related commercial leadership roles.

• Strong track record of leading or materially shaping strategy for large, high-priority brands or complex portfolios, with clear evidence of business impact.

• Hands-on experience translating strategy into execution, including customer engagement, cross-functional alignment, and disciplined follow-through.

• Exposure to FMCG industries is a plus.

Professional knowledge and skill

• Deep strategic marketing expertise, with strong understanding of brand strategy, customer engagement, and the drivers of sustainable brand growth.

• Ability to work collaboratively across functions to drive clarity, sharpen priorities, and translate strategy into focused execution.

• Able to bring structure and clarity to complex business questions, sharpen strategic choices, and help teams stay focused on the few priorities that matter most.

• Collaborative and influential, with the ability to align diverse stakeholders, challenge constructively, and drive clarity without direct authority.

• Strong executive communication skills, with the ability to synthesize issues clearly and support high-quality decision-making.

• Agile, proactive, and outcome-oriented, with strong ownership, learning agility, and a high compliance mindset.

• Professional proficiency in English and Mandarin.

Required Skills:

Adaptability, Data-Driven Decision Making, Feasibility Studies, Market Research, Pharmaceutical Market, Portfolio Management, Project Management, Resource Allocation, Risk Management, Strategic Planning, Strategic Thinking

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

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:

No Travel Required:

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

06/30/2026

**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.