Senior Director, Medical and Scientific Communications

Position Summary

Reporting to the Vice President, Medical and Scientific Communications, the Senior Director, Medical and Scientific Communications will lead the development and execution of Vera's publication and scientific congress strategy. Working in close partnership with the Vice President and with colleagues across Clinical Development, Biostatistics, Medical Affairs, and Commercial, this individual is responsible for ensuring that clinical and scientific data are communicated in a timely, accurate, consistent, and impactful manner across manuscripts, congresses, and other scientific communications, in alignment with the medical and scientific communication platform owned by the Vice President.

This is a highly cross-functional and hands-on role requiring both strategic leadership and strong executional capability. The Senior Director will work closely with Clinical Development, Biostatistics, Medical Affairs, Clinical Operations, Regulatory, and Commercial to translate clinical development milestones, emerging data, and scientific priorities into an integrated, long-range publication and congress plan.

The successful candidate will bring exceptional scientific judgment, writing and editorial skill and the ability to identify inconsistencies or gaps in the scientific narrative across programs and materials. This individual serves as a steward of Vera's scientific story and partners across functions to build the scalable publication and congress infrastructure the pipeline requires.

Responsibilities

Strategy and Scientific Narrative

• Lead the development of the long-range publication plan in partnership with Clinical Development, Biostatistics, and Medical Affairs, aligning data dissemination priorities with clinical development milestones and program strategy, for review and approval by the Vice President, Medical and Scientific Communications.
• Build and maintain an integrated publication roadmap encompassing manuscripts, abstracts, posters, oral presentations, encore presentations, and other scientific communications.
• Translate clinical development plans, data readouts, and key milestones into proactive publication and congress strategies, partnering with cross-functional stakeholders to establish publication priorities, sequencing, and timelines.
• Anticipate future evidence and communication needs and evolve the publication plan as clinical programs and the external scientific landscape advance.
• Develop and maintain publication-level scientific content and evidence-based messaging that apply the medical and scientific communication platform and bring proposed changes to the platform or core narrative to the Vice President for decision.

Publications and Congresses

• Lead development of the scientific congress strategy in collaboration with Clinical Development, Medical Affairs, and Commercial, mapping anticipated data releases to relevant congresses, coordinating planning and execution of abstracts, posters, and oral presentations, and maintaining awareness of major scientific meetings and competitive data.
• Draft, edit, and critically review scientific content, including manuscripts, abstracts, posters, oral presentations, and scientific slide decks, ensuring materials accurately communicate the significance, limitations, and context of clinical findings and maintain a high standard of scientific rigor, clarity, and consistency.
• Lead the end-to-end publication development process from concept and data availability through submission, presentation, publication, and post-publication activity, establishing timelines, milestones, roles, and responsibilities with cross-functional input.
• Coordinate internal and external author review, including resolution of conflicting feedback and documentation of author contributions, and build productive working relationships with investigators and external authors.
• Ensure publications comply with applicable standards and guidelines, including Good Publication Practice (GPP), ICMJE authorship criteria, company policies, and journal and congress requirements.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with Clinical Development and Biostatistics to interpret clinical datasets, statistical outputs, tables, listings, and figures and translate them into high-quality scientific communications.
• Engage early in the clinical development and analysis process to ensure planned data outputs support anticipated publications and congress submissions, and identify additional analyses that strengthen the scientific evidence base.
• Serve as the scientific communications partner to Clinical Development, Biostatistics, Medical Affairs, Clinical Operations, Regulatory, and Commercial, building alignment on data dissemination priorities, scientific messages, timelines, and deliverables, and influencing decisions without relying on direct authority.
• Review cross-functional materials for consistency with the approved scientific narrative and underlying evidence.
• Identify scientific communication risks, gaps, or inconsistencies and recommend solutions.

Operations and Vendor Management

• Optimize Vera's publication planning and development processes, establishing efficient and scalable workflows, governance, templates, tools, and review processes, and identifying bottlenecks and opportunities to improve speed, quality, and cross-functional coordination.
• Maintain the systems that track publication status, deadlines, dependencies, author reviews, and key decisions, and provide metrics and reporting that give the team and cross-functional leadership visibility into progress against the publication plan.
• Coordinate the cross-functional publication planning committee, preparing materials and recommendations.
• Manage external medical communications agencies, publication vendors, and freelance medical writers, setting clear expectations for scientific quality, deliverables, timelines, and spend, and providing active scientific and editorial direction that complements agency capability with internal scientific judgment.
• Build and maintain publication and congress forecasts and manage delivery within the Medical and Scientific Communications budget held by the Vice President.

Travel: up to 30% for congresses, advisory meetings, and other business activities.

Qualifications

Required

• Advanced scientific or clinical degree (PhD, PharmD, MD, or equivalent) in a relevant discipline.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in scientific communications, medical writing, or publications within the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, or medical communications industry, including at least 8 years of direct experience in medical writing and scientific publications and the development of peer-reviewed manuscripts and scientific congress presentations.
• Demonstrated experience developing and executing strategic publication plans for clinical-stage programs.
• Strong understanding of clinical development and demonstrated ability to interpret clinical trial data, statistical analyses, tables, figures, and other data outputs.
• Experience working directly with Clinical Development and Biostatistics to translate complex clinical data into scientific publications and communications.
• Exceptional scientific writing, editing, and critical review skills, with the ability to translate complex data into clear and compelling scientific narratives.
• Demonstrated experience managing publication development and external author review.
• Knowledge of Good Publication Practice (GPP), ICMJE authorship guidelines, and applicable publication standards and ethical requirements.
• Working knowledge of healthcare compliance requirements governing medical communications, including relevant OIG, PhRMA, and EFPIA guidelines.
• Demonstrated ability to manage external medical communications agencies and vendors.
• Ability to manage multiple complex projects, priorities, and deadlines in a fast-paced biotechnology environment.
• Strong interpersonal and influencing skills with demonstrated ability to build alignment across cross-functional teams.

Preferred

• Scientific training or research experience in nephrology, immunology, or a closely related discipline.
• Deep scientific knowledge of nephrology, immunology, autoimmune disease, or related therapeutic areas, with experience in IgA nephropathy or related glomerular diseases a plus.
• Experience developing long-range publication strategies that integrate clinical development milestones, statistical analyses, congress opportunities, and manuscript planning.
• Experience supporting scientific communication platforms and core scientific narratives.
• Prior people leadership experience within a publications or medical communications function.
• Certified Medical Publication Professional (CMPP) credential.

Leadership Profile

The ideal candidate combines scientific depth, strategic thinking, and exceptional execution. They are equally comfortable building a multi-year publication plan, discussing clinical and statistical outputs with physicians and biostatisticians, editing a manuscript, working through author comments, identifying an inconsistency in the scientific narrative, or holding an agency accountable for a critical deliverable.

This individual is intellectually curious, detail-oriented, collaborative, and comfortable operating with a high degree of ownership. Success in this role requires the ability to see the broader scientific story while maintaining rigorous attention to the data and details that support it, and to work in close partnership with the Vice President, who holds final decision rights on the scientific communication platform and on scientific accuracy.

Originally posted on Himalayas