Ascendis Pharma is a dynamic, fast-growing global biopharmaceutical company with locations in Denmark, Europe, and the United States. Today, we're advancing programs in Endocrinology Rare Disease and Oncology.
Here at Ascendis, we pride ourselves on exceptional science, visionary leadership, and skilled and passionate colleagues.
Guided by our core values of Patients, Science, and Passion, we use our TransCon® drug development platform to fulfill our mission of developing new and potentially best-in-class therapies to address unmet medical needs.
Our culture fosters a place where skilled, adaptable, and highly resourceful professionals can truly make their mark. We offer a dynamic workplace for employees to grow and develop their skills.
Position summary
The Associate Project Director, GRAPS is a senior project-management professional who translates GRAPS priorities into disciplined execution across Global Regulatory Affairs, Global Patient Safety, and enterprise partners. The role establishes fit-for-purpose governance, integrated plans, decision pathways, performance reporting, and risk management for a portfolio of strategic and operational initiatives.
Working with the Chief Regulatory & Safety Officer, GRAPS Leadership Team, functional leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders, this individual will lead small-to-medium, complex projects and selected larger workstreams that require coordination across functions, geographies, vendors, and systems. The role combines strategic perspective with hands-on delivery and is expected to influence without authority, improve ways of working, and strengthen quality, compliance, predictability, and organizational scalability.
Key responsibilities
Strategic portfolio and project leadership
- Lead assigned GRAPS projects and programs from definition through closeout, with clear charters, scope, objectives, outcomes, milestones, owners, dependencies, and success measures.
- Partner with GRAPS leaders to translate strategic priorities into integrated roadmaps and sequenced execution plans aligned with portfolio and enterprise objectives.
- Maintain a consolidated view of the GRAPS project portfolio, distinguishing project work from base-business activity and highlighting capacity constraints, interdependencies, and decisions required.
- Facilitate project initiation, prioritization, stage reviews, lessons learned, and benefits realization.
Governance, planning, and delivery
- Establish and run proportionate governance, including core teams, steering forums, agendas, decision logs, action tracking, and escalation pathways.
- Develop and maintain integrated project plans, critical paths, resource assumptions, budgets, RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, and Dependencies or Decisions) logs, and change controls.
- Monitor execution against scope, schedule, quality, cost, and expected outcomes; identify emerging issues early and drive recovery plans.
- Prepare concise executive dashboards, status reports, decision memos, and recommendations for the GRAPS Leadership Team and other governance bodies.
Cross-functional collaboration and communication
- Coordinate stakeholders across Regulatory Affairs, Patient Safety, Clinical Development, Medical Affairs, Quality, IT, Finance, HR, Legal, Procurement, and external partners, as applicable.
- Create clarity on roles, accountabilities, interfaces, and handoffs, using fit-for-purpose RACI or equivalent tools.
- Facilitate complex workshops and working sessions that align stakeholders, resolve ambiguity, and convert discussion into decisions and accountable actions.
- Communicate proactively and tailor content for executive, technical, and operational audiences across cultures and time zones.
Operational excellence, quality, and compliance
- Identify opportunities to standardize, simplify, and scale GRAPS processes, templates, tools, and operating practices.
- Partner with process owners and Quality to ensure project deliverables support applicable GxP, regulatory, pharmacovigilance, documentation, training, inspection-readiness, and records-management requirements.
- Use data and trend analysis to monitor performance, identify root causes, and recommend sustainable improvements.
- Support adoption of digital project-management, collaboration, dashboarding, workflow, and knowledge-management capabilities.
Resource, vendor, and change management
- Coordinate resource planning for assigned initiatives and surface trade-offs requiring leadership action.
- Support vendor selection, statements of work, onboarding, purchase-order coordination, deliverable oversight, and performance monitoring in partnership with Procurement and Finance.
- Develop stakeholder and change-impact assessments, communication plans, readiness activities, and adoption measures for new processes, systems, and operating models.
- Provide direction, coaching, and project-methodology support to workstream leads and more junior project-management colleagues; may lead contractors or matrixed team members.
Requirements
Professional qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in life sciences, business, project management, engineering, or a related discipline; advanced degree is preferred.
- Typically 8 or more years of relevant experience in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or other highly regulated industry, including substantial responsibility for cross-functional project or program delivery.
- Demonstrated experience leading small-to-medium complex projects or major workstreams with functional-management stakeholders and limited day-to-day supervision.
- Working knowledge of drug development and commercialization, with experience in Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance/Patient Safety, Quality, Regulatory Operations, or adjacent functions strongly preferred.
- Demonstrated command of project and program management practices, including scope, schedule, resource, budget, dependency, risk, issue, change, governance, and benefits management.
- Experience preparing executive-ready dashboards, status reports, decision materials, and presentations using Microsoft 365 and relevant project-management or reporting tools.
- Project-management certification such as PMP, PRINCE2, or equivalent is preferred; Agile or change-management training is an advantage.
Leadership capabilities and personal attributes
- Enterprise mindset and patient focus, with sound judgment about business, quality, compliance, and reputational risk.
- Advanced stakeholder-management and influencing skills, including the ability to establish alignment and accountability without formal authority.
- Highly structured, analytical, and detail-oriented while maintaining focus on strategic intent and outcomes.
- Able to simplify complexity, frame options, recommend a path forward, and communicate decisions clearly.
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity, managing competing priorities, and adapting plans as conditions change.
- Collaborative, inclusive, culturally aware, and effective in a global matrix environment.
- High integrity, discretion, ownership, and commitment to transparent communication and follow-through.
Key interfaces
Primary - Chief Regulatory & Safety Officer; GRAPS Leadership Team; GRAPS Enablement & Insights
Functional - Global Regulatory Affairs; Global Patient Safety; Regulatory Operations; Quality and Compliance
Enterprise - Clinical Development; Medical Affairs; IT; Finance; HR; Legal; Procurement; Communications
External - Consultants, CROs, technology providers, and other vendors, as required
Measures of success
- Projects have agreed scope, governance, accountabilities, milestones, risk controls, and measurable outcomes.
- Leadership receives timely, decision-ready visibility into progress, dependencies, resource needs, risks, and trade-offs.
- Priority deliverables are completed to agreed quality and timelines, with issues escalated early and recovery actions documented.
- Ways of working become more consistent, efficient, scalable, and inspection-ready across GRAPS.
- Stakeholders understand decisions, responsibilities, and next steps, and demonstrate sustained adoption of implemented changes.
Additional information
- Travel: Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to approximately 10%, based on business needs.
- Location: Proposed as a US or EU remote or hybrid role, with travel to Ascendis locations and business-critical meetings as needed.
- This description summarizes the principal responsibilities of the role and may be adjusted as organizational priorities evolve.
The estimated salary range for this position is $180k - $190k. Actual salary determination is dependent on a variety of factors some of which include: experience, qualifications, and geographic location. This position may be eligible for a discretionary annual bonus or an incentive compensation plan (eligibility varies based on role and position level), discretionary stock-based long-term incentives, paid time off, and a comprehensive benefits package.
Benefits
- 401(k) plan with company match
- Medical, dental, and vision plans
- Company-offered Life and Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D) insurance
- Company-provided short and long-term disability benefits
- Unique offerings of Pet Insurance and Legal Insurance
- Employee Assistance Program
- Employee Discounts
- Professional Development
- Health Saving Account (HSA)
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Various incentive compensation plans
- Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity Insurance
- Mental Health resources
- Paid leave benefits for new parents
Ascendis Pharma is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.
A note to recruiters:
We do not allow external search party solicitation. Presentation of candidates without written permission from the Ascendis Pharma Inc Human Resources team (specifically from: Talent Acquisition Partner or Human Resources Director) is not allowed. If this occurs your ownership of these candidates will not be acknowledged.