Vice President, Product Strategy

Position Title: Vice President, Product Strategy

Department: Product Strategy

Reports To: Chief Strategy Officer

Location: South San Francisco, CA or Princeton, NJ or Chicago, IL – On-site 4 days per week (Mon to Thurs)

Job Overview

The Vice President, Product Strategy will play a key role in defining and driving the end-to-end product strategy across the Kardigan’s portfolio. The successful individual sits at the intersection of science, clinical development, commercial, and corporate strategy, translating pipeline assets into clear product visions, value propositions, and lifecycle strategies that maximize patient impact and enterprise value.

The VP Product Strategy partners closely with Global Program Heads (GPHs) to ensure product strategy decisions are grounded in rigorous data, differentiated positioning, and long-term portfolio value creation. This includes working across Clinical Development, Medical Affairs, Regulatory, Commercial, and Business Development functions.

The VP Product Strategy will lead a team of individuals who serve as either product strategy leads for individual products or as centralized capability groups (“CoEs”) such as competitive intelligence, forecasting and market access.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Product Positioning & Development Plan Support

• Lead the development and ongoing evolution of integrated product strategies across all pipeline and marketed assets, from early clinical stages through lifecycle management.
• Prioritize product expansion opportunities, and recommend timing (e.g., when to initiate new programs)
• Define and continue to refine the strategy for global commercialization of the portfolio
• Define target product profiles (TPPs), value propositions, and differentiation strategies informed by unmet need, competitive landscape, and clinical data.
• Partner with Clinical Development and Medical to influence trial design, endpoints, and evidence generation aligned to product and commercial goals.
• Drive scenario planning and trade-off decisions across indications, lines of therapy, geographies, and lifecycle opportunities.
• Lead competitive intelligence and market landscaping to inform strategic choices and risk mitigation

Investment Decision-Making

• Serve as a strategic advisor to the Chief Strategy Officer, GPHs and Chief Executive Officer on product- and portfolio-level decisions.
• Support the GPHs in developing recommendations for program-related investments (stage-gate decisions, new indications, new formulations, development plan modifications, etc.)
• Work closely with the portfolio management team to ensure a quality and timely factbase for portfolio decision-making, and appropriate framing / communication of recommendations for Kardigan’s portfolio governance mechanisms
• Support business development activities including asset evaluation, diligence, and integration of acquired programs into the portfolio.

Launch Planning

• Create and own the overall cross-functional launch plan
• Drive decision-making and execution on the activities that are most critical for successful product launches
• Partner with Commercial to ensure launch readiness, positioning, and lifecycle strategies are cohesive and evidence-based.
• Collaborate with Regulatory and Market Access to anticipate approval pathways, pricing considerations, and reimbursement dynamics.

Team & Capability Building

• Define required CoEs and plan / timeframe to build these out; lead hiring and talent development of the CoEs
• Ensure CoEs are appropriately supporting both of global product teams and our business development activities
• Manage and mentor product strategy leads; provide guidance on most critical issues across the portfolio

Qualifications and Preferred Skills

Education:

• Advanced degree preferred (PhD, MD, PharmD, MBA), with strong scientific literacy required.

Experience:

• 12+ years of experience in biotech, pharma, or life sciences consulting with progressive leadership responsibility.
• Demonstrated experience leading product strategy across clinical development stages; pre-launch and launch experience strongly preferred.
• Proven experience working cross-funcdtionally across R&D, Commercial, Regulatory, and Market Access
• Prior involvement with launch readiness, pricing and reimbursement planning, and evidence generation strategy development.
• Experience building and scaling a product strategy function, including team development, governance frameworks
• Deep understanding of clinical development, regulatory pathways, competitive dynamics, and commercialization considerations.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

• Proven ability to lead workstreams and influence cross-functionally to drive alignment without direct authority
• Ability to lead and manage a product strategy team
• Strong strategic and technical understanding; strong analytical skills and ability to anticipate operational issues and risks, and to proactively recommend mitigations and solutions
• Strong skills in strategic framing and communication via PowerPoint presentations
• Initiative/self-starter with a continuous improvement mindset and demonstrated experience managing across multiple functions and teams
• Strong work ethic with a sense of urgency and demonstrated ability to consistently deliver high quality output
• Excellent written and oral communication skills; comfortable interacting and communicating with individuals at all levels of the organization
• Detail oriented with ability to manage multiple priorities
• Strong sense of resilience and comfortable operating in a fast-paced, dynamic, start-up environment
• Flexibility to travel as needed; spending time periodically with functional and program leaders and teams as well as overall corporate leadership located in SSF, Chicago and Princeton will be required