[Hiring] VP, Access Strategy and Payer Engagement @Ocular Therapeutix

Role Description

As VP of Access Strategy & Payer Engagement, you'll play a pivotal role in defining how our products are valued, covered, and accessed across the US payer landscape. Your primary focus will be owning the Market Access and HEOR strategy across the portfolio, building the evidence, value narratives, and payer engagement plans that drive optimal formulary positioning, reimbursement, and patient access.

You'll serve as a senior relationship owner with national and regional payers and PBMs, leading coverage negotiations and proactively shaping the market ahead of launch. Partnering closely across Market Access, Commercial, Medical and executive leadership, you'll ensure access strategy is fully integrated into brand planning, financial decision-making, and the patient journey from first prescription through ongoing adherence. This is a build-and-lead role — you'll support development of a high-performing market access team leading by influence while remaining a hands-on strategic contributor.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required. Advanced degree — MBA, or a healthcare-related or business field equivalent — strongly preferred.
• 12–15+ years of progressive experience in pharmaceutical or biotech market access, payer strategy, or HEOR, including at least 3 years at the ED or VP level.
• Demonstrated success building and executing multi-year market access plans and integrating access strategy into long-range financial planning and brand planning processes.
• Prior experience in Retina or ophthalmology a plus.
• Expert-level knowledge of US payer dynamics, formulary mechanics, and gross-to-net economics across commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid channels.
• Direct experience launching a Medicare Part B buy-and-bill product, including navigating miscellaneous J-code periods through permanent coding.
• Deep understanding of health economics and outcomes research methodology, including cost-effectiveness analysis, budget impact modeling, cost-utility analysis, and indirect treatment comparisons.
• Experience defining and overseeing real-world evidence (RWE) strategies, including retrospective database studies, patient-reported outcomes (PRO) research, registry studies, and burden of illness analyses.
• Working knowledge of Inflation Reduction Act provisions and their downstream impact on pricing, access, and contracting strategy.
• Demonstrated ability to translate brand P&L dynamics into access investment and gross-to-net trade-off decisions.
• Strong understanding of how payer, pricing, and contracting strategies interact with enterprise-level financial performance.
• Proven track record negotiating directly with national payers and PBMs at a senior level on coverage policy, contracting, and value-based arrangements.
• Strong influence and alignment skills with senior commercial and medical stakeholders.
• Ability to build trust and drive consensus across a matrixed organization while navigating ambiguity and organizational change.
• Previous supervisory and people management experience with a demonstrated ability to develop talent and scale team capabilities alongside portfolio growth.

Requirements

• Own end-to-end market access strategy across the portfolio — from early lifecycle development through commercial execution.
• Define payer value propositions, messaging, and positioning tailored to the specific access barriers and customer dynamics of each product and indication.
• Build and continuously refine market access playbooks as the competitive landscape, category dynamics, and payer responses evolve.
• Define and monitor access performance metrics including access quality, access speed, and gross-to-net performance relative to plan.
• Own the HEOR strategic agenda in service of market access, payer engagement, and value demonstration objectives.
• Define the evidence generation roadmap — including real-world evidence, burden of illness studies, comparative effectiveness research, and economic modeling.
• Partner with Medical Affairs and Clinical teams to integrate HEOR priorities into trial design and data collection from the earliest lifecycle stages.
• Develop and maintain core economic models including budget impact analyses, cost-effectiveness models, and value-based contract frameworks.
• Translate HEOR outputs into accessible, compelling value narratives for payer, provider, and HCP audiences.
• Oversee the development of AMCP dossiers, value dossiers, and other payer-facing evidence packages.
• Engage with external health economics thought leaders, advisory boards, and payer medical directors to shape the evidence agenda and validate value frameworks.
• Inform pricing and contracting strategy across the portfolio, balancing access investment against gross-to-net discipline.
• Own national payer account strategy across commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid channels.
• Serve as senior relationship owner for top national and regional payers and PBMs, leading direct negotiations on coverage policy, contracting, and value-based arrangements.
• Build proactive market-shaping strategies that engage payers, health systems, and other stakeholders ahead of formulary decisions.
• Track the evolving policy landscape and translate implications into account strategy and forecasting inputs.
• Serve as a direct strategic partner to commercial leadership, jointly owning the balance between brand growth objectives and access and GTN discipline.
• Lead and develop across the Market Access team, coaching members to operate as strategic owners.

Benefits

• Salary Range: $340,000 - $365,000 USD