Description
Director, Analytics & Insights (Clinical RWD/RWE Solutions)
About us
Norstella is a premier and critical global life sciences data and AI solutions provider dedicated to improving
patient access to life-saving therapies. Norstella supports pharmaceutical and biotech companies across the full
drug development lifecycle — from pipeline to patient. Our mission is simple: to help our clients bring therapies
to market faster and more efficiently, ultimately impacting patient lives.
Norstella unites market-leading brands - Citeline, Evaluate, MMIT, Panalgo, Skipta and The Dedham Group
and delivers must-have answers and insights, leveraging AI, for critical strategic, clinical, and commercial
decision-making. We help our clients:
- Accelerate the drug development cycle
- Assess competition and bring the right drugs to market
- Make data driven commercial and financial decisions
- Match and recruit patients for clinical trials
- Identify and address barriers to therapies
Norstella serves most pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world, along with regulators like the
FDA, and payers. By providing critical proprietary data supporting AI-driven workflows, Norstella helps clients
make decisions faster and with greater confidence. Norstella's investments in AI are transforming how data is
consumed and decisions are made, disrupting inefficient legacy workflows and helping the industry become
more efficient, innovative, and responsive to patient needs.
Job description
This is a player-manager position within the Content Strategy team in Norstella Content Operations, reporting to
the VP, Content Strategy. It combines hands-on strategic ownership with leadership of a small team of technical
RWD specialists (two direct reports) who implement the RWD logic and analytical solutions. The role is UK
based and remote. The Director sets the direction for RWD/RWE transformational programs and projects that
address key business priorities, working in close collaboration with cross-functional business units (Technology,
Product, Data Science, Services), and remains directly hands-on in the strategy, evidence logic and specification
work that underpins them, focusing on:
- Data Optimisation - Drive AI-ready, quality RWE
- Data Utilisation - Maximise data utility and unlock opportunities to leverage Norstella RWD data
across the business to drive value, including as the foundation for AI solutions and agentic workflows
- Thought Partnership - Spearhead data strategy, acting as the SME bridge between client value and
Norstella data across both content products and AI-driven solutions
- Defensible RWE - own the logic and standards for how real-world evidence is defined, built and
defended (cohort definitions, endpoint-based business rules, study design), ensuring outputs are
clinically sound, withstand scientific and client scrutiny, and are fit to power both content products and
AI solutions and agents
Responsibilities
Serve as an influential RWD/RWE Content SME and thought partner advising
senior leadership across Norstella
- Set the RWD/RWE strategy - direct how real-world evidence is generated, structured and productised
across all therapeutic areas, in service of the broader content strategy
- Own cross-functional stakeholder relationships and client engagements across Product, Services,
Technology and Data Science, acting as an ambassador for the value of RWE data with internal and
external stakeholders and surfacing opportunities for growth and enhancement
- Represent RWD as a function across Product, Data Science, Content and Technology - resolving trade
offs and providing clear, clinically grounded paths forward
- Own the translation of complex, data-driven RWE concepts into business-digestible value and ROI for
clients, aligned with enterprise-wide priorities
- Ensure clear lines of communication with product and AI teams developing RWE roadmap items -
including AI solutions and agents that consume our data - and ensure on-time delivery of data
- Report to executive leadership team on progress, risks and implications of strategic initiatives
Own the defensible logic and specification of our real-world evidence
- Define and govern the standards for cohort definitions, primary and secondary endpoint logic, and real
world study design across therapeutic areas (indication-agnostic)
- Translate clinical and RWD expertise into precise, buildable specifications and business rules that Data
Science and Technology can implement without ambiguity
- Provide clear, clinically grounded paths forward when the science, data and product priorities are in
tension - acting as the bridge between clinical reality and what gets built and shipped
- Ensure the defensibility of RWE outputs is maintained as offerings scale, setting the evidence bar that
protects scientific credibility and commercial value
- Own the evidence logic, interpretation standards and analytic approach that turn extracted data into
actionable insights and strategic recommendations - setting the direction others build to, grounded in
prior hands-on data experience rather than routine extraction
- Understand the relationship between clinical reality and its imperfect representation in healthcare data -
recognising artefacts introduced by coding behaviour, reimbursement processes, site-specific practice
and incomplete longitudinal capture, and determining where absence of an event in the data can and
cannot reasonably be interpreted as clinical absence
- Identify when apparently valid analytical outputs are clinically implausible, and challenge logic that is
technically executable but clinically unsound
- Apply observational and epidemiological judgement to solution design - critically assessing cohort
construction, index dates, follow-up definitions and endpoint selection, and recognising material
sources of selection bias, information bias, confounding, censoring, missingness and measurement
error
- Ensure solutions distinguish appropriately between descriptive observation, association and causal
interpretation, and partner with specialist epidemiologists or statisticians where advanced
methodological input is required
- Establish clinically justified assumptions where RWD is incomplete or ambiguous, identify appropriate
proxy measures, and specify edge cases and exception handling required for robust implementation
Ownership of end-to-end enhancement of content datasets, leading capability
expansion
- Spearhead identification of whitespace and structural gaps, and architect feasible, innovative and
scalable RWE enhancements to close them - including AI-driven ones
- Work with Product and AI teams to scope disease area priorities, definitions and requirements for both
content products and AI/agent use cases, thinking strategically and commercially
- Ensure content and RWE outputs are AI- and agent-ready - structured, retrievable and semantically
consistent so they can be reliably consumed by AI solutions, agentic workflows and downstream
products
- Define the clinical knowledge, decision logic, constraints and validation requirements for agents
interacting with RWD - ensuring AI-enabled outputs distinguish clearly between observed information,
calculated outputs, clinical assumptions and inferred conclusions
- Develop validation scenarios that test whether agent outputs remain clinically coherent across
representative and edge-case patients, identify failure modes where automated interpretation of RWD
could mislead, and help establish guardrails so AI increases scale without eroding clinical credibility or
transparency
- Work with data engineering and technology teams to productionise processes at scale
- Assess whether prospective RWD sources can support intended product capabilities and use cases -
evaluating longitudinality, completeness, representativeness, granularity, linkage and clinical
specificity across EHR, claims, lab, registry and other healthcare datasets - and advise Product teams
when data limitations make a proposed capability unreliable or potentially misleading
- Build reusable clinical RWD intellectual property such as: libraries of clinical definitions, cohort
frameworks, phenotype logic, treatment algorithms, line-of-therapy rules, endpoint definitions, patient
journey constructs, documented assumptions, edge cases and validation scenarios
- Establish standards for documenting clinical logic, rationale, assumptions and known limitations, with
versioning and governance so reusable logic can evolve as clinical practice, available data and product
requirements change - and ensure definitions are not reused outside contexts in which they remain
valid. Own and improve the processes and tools used to execute projects effectively
Team management
- Align with the VP, Content Strategy on team direction and priorities in line with wider Content
Strategy priorities
- Directly manage and develop a small team of technical RWD specialists (two direct reports)
responsible for implementing RWD logic and analytical solutions - providing sufficient clinical context
for them to understand the intent behind what they build, reviewing implementation outputs against the
approved specification, and remaining close enough to the work to coach and challenge without
becoming the primary data extractor or programmer
- Direct the team's technical delivery - setting priorities for the ingestion, transformation and
standardisation of claims, EHR and registry data into analysis-ready form, and for the data profiling,
quality checks and QC review that underpin output reliability - and reviewing that work against the
approved clinical specification rather than performing it
- Implement performance management structures committed to delivering excellence, ensuring clear
development and delivery goals for reports and being accountable for their delivery of those goals
- Deliver implementation through the team while personally owning the strategy, evidence logic and
specifications they build to - keeping all team members aligned on business priorities and delivering to
a regular cadence
- Foster leadership development, and mentor and support junior team members
Qualifications
Essential
- 5+ years' hands-on experience in RWD study design and statistical ownership, working directly with
sources such as open/closed claims, lab, EMR/EHR, registries, healthcare coding systems such as ICD
10 and NDC, and drug/medication data. Fluency in US real-world data sources and their respective
strengths and limits
- Strong clinical expertise is essential - the ability to understand disease and treatment pathways,
interpret healthcare data within the context of real clinical practice, identify clinically implausible
assumptions or outputs, and reason through ambiguity where clinical reality is only partially
represented in the data - together with the demonstrated ability to translate that reasoning into cohort
definitions, endpoint-based business rules and precise, buildable specifications
- Technical credibility to direct and quality-assure the team's work - hands-on experience with statistical
validation techniques, and sufficient fluency in SQL/Python and R and/or SAS to review analytical
scripts and outputs, challenge the approach taken and give substantive feedback
- Understanding of the evidence needs of biopharma stakeholders across functions such as Clinical
Development, Medical Affairs, RWE, HEOR and Market Access, and the ability to translate recurring
RWD needs into scalable product capabilities
- An MD or equivalent medical qualification is highly desirable. Candidates with other relevant clinical
qualifications or backgrounds - Bachelor's or Master's in Life Sciences, Pharmacy, Medical Sciences or
equivalent - will be considered where they demonstrate substantial clinical knowledge and the ability to
apply clinical reasoning to real-world healthcare data
- 10+ years' experience preferably in a biopharma intelligence, business research or life sciences
consulting domain, including prior direct line management of a small technical or analytical team
- Cross-functional influence - experience representing a technical team or function to product, data and
commercial stakeholders, driving aligned decisions and building effective working relationships across
seniority levels
- Experience supporting the development of data, analytics, content or software products in life sciences
or healthcare, including building and executing the business case for new capabilities. Strong
understanding of the drug development lifecycle, and of how life science data is published, captured
and processed to translate real-world events into structured content
- Excellent proficiency in Microsoft Office, including SharePoint, Excel and PowerPoint, Monday.com,
LucidChart, Jira, Confluence, GitHub
- Impeccable or native English verbal and written communication, with previous experience working in
global teams
Desirable
- Knowledge of cloud data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift and Snowflake
- Experience integrating RWD/RWE into AI solutions and agentic workflows, or building content to be
AI- and agent-ready
- Exposure to outcomes research, HEOR, market access or other biopharma evidence-generation use
cases, particularly where this has involved the application of real-world data
Our Guiding Principles for success at Norstella:
- 01: Bold, Passionate, and Mission-First
- 02: Integrity, Truth, and Reality
- 03: Kindness, Empathy, and Grace
- 04: Resilience, Mettle, and Perseverance
- 05: Humility, Gratitude, and Learning
Benefits: US
- Medical and Prescription Drug Benefits
- Health Savings Accounts (HSA) or Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
- Dental & Vision Benefits
- Basic Life and AD&D Benefits
- 401k Retirement Plan with Company Match
- Company Paid Short & Long-Term Disability
- Paid Parental Leave
- Paid Time Off & Company Holidays
Norstella is an equal opportunity employer. All job applicants will receive equal treatment regardless of race,
creed, color, religion, alienage or national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, physical or mental disability
or handicap, medical condition, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), marital or
domestic partner status, military or veteran status, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation,
genetic information, reproductive health decision making, or any other protected characteristic as established by
federal, state, or local law.
Sometimes the best opportunities are hidden by self-doubt. We disqualify ourselves before we have the
opportunity to be considered. Regardless of where you came from, how you identify, or the path that led you
here - you are welcome. If you read this job description and feel passion and excitement, we're just as excited
about you.
All legitimate roles with Norstella will be posted on Norstella's job board which is located at
norstella.com/careers. If a role is not posted on this job board, a candidate should assume the role is not a
legitimate role with Norstella. Norstella is not responsible for an application that may be submitted by or
through a third-party and candidates should proceed with extreme caution if a third-party approaches them about
an open role with Norstella. Norstella will never ask for anything of value or any type of payment during or as
part of any recruitment, interview, or pre-hire onboarding process. If you are aware of or have reason to believe
a job posting purportedly for a role with Norstella is fraudulent or otherwise not authorized by Norstella, please
contact the Company using the following email address:
[email protected].
