[Hiring] Associate Director, Market Research @Vera Therapeutics

Role Description

The Associate Director, Market Research owns and leads market research for the commercial team and reports to Senior Director, Strategic Insights & Analytics. This person will be the commercial team’s primary research expert, identifying brand growth opportunities and proactively shaping brand strategy and tactics as the market evolves. Role may offer opportunities to support secondary data analytics and/or competitive intelligence depending on business needs and interests.

In this hands-on, highly visible individual contributor role, you will help shape commercial decisions at a small, fast-moving biotech. You will partner with Marketing, Sales, Market Access, Medical Affairs, and Commercial Operations and present recommendations to senior leaders. Bring curiosity, creativity, technical expertise, analytical rigor, sound business judgment, and strong communication skills to proactively identify research needs and translate findings into evidence-backed decisions and actions.

Experience integrating primary research with secondary data analytics, and/or competitive intelligence is a strong plus.

Responsibilities

• Own and lead market research
• Develop and own market research roadmap, prioritizing the most important business questions about:
  • Launch performance
  • Support indication expansion
  • Customer segmentation
  • Forecast inputs
  • Competitive response
  • Landscape assessment, including syndicated reports
• Independently translate business questions into research objectives and select fit-for-purpose qualitative and quantitative approaches.
• Scope and design research instruments, including survey instruments, discussion guides, stimuli, presentations, and other relevant deliverables.
• Proactively drive thoughtful analytics leveraging market research data to uncover actionable insights that inform business decisions.
• Deliver insights that drive decisions:
  • Analyze and synthesize research into clear, concise stories that answer the business question, explain the implications, and recommend action tied to business impact.
  • Deliver presentations to senior leadership and cross-functional teams with clarity and command.
  • Where relevant, integrate primary research with secondary data analytics, and competitive intelligence to give stakeholders a holistic view of the market and the brand.
• Manage execution and vendors:
  • Execute research in accordance with applicable data privacy, data governance, fair market value, and external stakeholder engagement requirements.
  • Manage multiple concurrent projects to timelines and quality standards.
  • Drive and monitor analytics with research vendors, critically evaluating methods, data quality, analysis, and interpretation to ensure technical rigor, accuracy, relevance, and meticulous quality across all deliverables.
  • Provide input into vendor selection; lead day-to-day vendor communication and oversight; ensure alignment with business needs and on-time delivery; and raise risks and issues early.
• Partner across the business:
  • Partner with Marketing, Sales, Market Access, Medical Affairs, and Commercial Operations to understand their business needs, identify critical insight gaps, and shape research priorities.
  • Build strong working relationships that keep the research agenda connected to the decisions each function needs to make.
  • Contribute research insights to brand planning, launch planning, and quarterly business reviews.
  • Act as a thought partner who builds alignment on research strategy and implications.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree; advanced degree (MBA, MS, MPH, or related field) strongly preferred.
• 8+ years of market research or insights experience, with hands-on experience supporting a product launch and tracking performance in a dynamic market.
• Pharmaceutical or biotech, consulting experience is preferred; experience supporting a launch is ideal.
• Advanced expertise in designing and executing both qualitative and quantitative primary research.
• Proven ability to independently own research projects end to end, from scoping to final readout, with minimal oversight.
• Ability to synthesize complex data into a clear story and a recommendation, and to present it with confidence to senior stakeholders.
• Ability to interpret secondary data and integrate it with primary research, including assessing data limitations.
• Strong critical thinking, attention to detail, and the ability to proactively clarify business context and make trade-off recommendations.
• Track record of managing external research vendors and timelines across multiple priorities.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity, at the pace of a small, agile biotech, and in a fast-changing competitive landscape.
• Willingness to travel up to 25%: Periodic travel is expected for team meetings, national and regional sales meetings, and onsite collaboration weeks at the Brisbane, CA headquarters.

Preferred

• Experience with secondary data and analytics, such as syndicated and claims data (e.g., IQVIA, Symphony Health, Komodo).
• Experience in competitive intelligence, including tracking competitor developments and translating them into implications for the brand.
• Experience in rare disease, specialty, or nephrology/immunology markets.
• Experience applying emerging AI methods to research and insights (e.g., text analytics, AI-assisted synthesis, advanced segmentation).

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401k match
• Flexible time off
• Paid holidays