Nearly 37 million Americans are currently affected by Chronic Kidney Disease. 37 million.

At Akebia we take that number very seriously and every day we come to work, with the purpose of bettering the lives of each person impacted by kidney disease and the renal community that serves them.
Our tenacious, passionate employees’ challenge the status quo and work to develop unique therapeutics that have the potential to set new standards of care for people living with kidney disease.

This is life-changing work, and we are all in, are you?

Job Summary

Reporting to the Sr. Director of Commercial Excellence, the Associate Director of Field Engagement and Effectiveness is responsible for gathering field insights regarding launch effectiveness requirements, developing commercial & sales training programs and delivering operational support to the customer-facing roles. This will include disease state, product/therapeutic landscape knowledge, compliance (OIG), and other commercialization processes and systems. The incumbent will need to collaborate across Medical, Marketing, Sales, Market Access, Legal, People and Culture, Regulatory, and other Partner Organizations.

Training (50% of the time)

• Aligning to Akebia’s annual strategy for sales and marketing focus
• Develop a sales training curriculum that motivates customer-facing personnel to achieve their goals and align with the strategy.
• Establish a collaborative, clinical, sales focused learning environment with core principles of adult learning
• Optimize curriculum that allows ongoing education for customer-facing teams to ensure consistency in disease state and product knowledge. (product/non-product training modules)
• Lead and coordinate new hire onboarding and training programs for customer-facing teams.
• Collaborate with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to create the appropriate learning content for the respective customer-facing role.
• Direct Field Trainers who will be peer-to-peer trainers with their colleagues within the sales team.
• Liaise with home office/field management about the development and delivery of training material.
• Document and maintain proper records of training initiatives.
• Collaborate with the administration of the Promotional, Medical, Legal, & Regulatory (PRC) process to identify the training requirements and the delivery of material for use.
• Support efforts in Company meeting planning and execution, including agenda creation, workshop development, and delivery as well as overall meeting facilitation for POAs & NSMs.
• Manage vendors and partners to produce meaningful curriculum within established scope and timeframes.
• Perform additional responsibilities and participate in special projects as assigned.

Field Effectiveness Insight Generation (30% of the time)

• Work with Sales Leadership Team to review team effectiveness with the aim of identifying performance gaps and create sales tactics and/or training programs to address them.
• Interpret sales data and KAM call information to develop appropriate training reinforcement and development plans.
• Perform ride along with KAMs to provide feedback on promotional effectiveness, customer engagement and territory management.
• Develop and implement KAM feedback tool to provide written feedback to KAMs to highlight performance attributes affecting promotional success.
• Develop and manage feedback from sales organization on key initiatives

Engagement Effectiveness Administration (20% of the time)

• Manage Learning Management System (Akebia Learning) partnering closely with Compliance, Commercial and Human Resources
• Participate in the implementation/deployment of technologies (Veeva CRM, Sales portal) to be used by the field force to increase efficiency, and effectiveness and determine the best way to train the team.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• 8+ years’ experience in a commercial role within a pharma or biotech company and at least 5 years in a sales/product training-focused role.
• Previous Experience in building a sales training continuum for a life science company
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, including PowerPoint, Excel, and Word
• Proficient in sales reporting and analytics tools (e.g., Tableau), as well as CRM and Learning Management Systems (LMS)
• Demonstrated experience with best-in-class means of training delivery including eLearning, self-study, assessment, audio/video, classroom, and experiential learning to ensure the sales force is trained and can deliver the attributes of our products.
• Strong interpersonal, presentation and facilitation skills required.
• Previous field sales experience is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated success in managing numerous projects simultaneously.
• Ability to challenge the thinking of an established customer facing team.
• Requires 15-35% travel.

Compensation:

Targeted Base: $171,290 - $211,593*

*Base Compensation for this role will depend on a number of factors including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience, and may fall outside of the range shown. Base pay is only one component of the company’s total rewards package, all regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or the incentive compensation program (if applicable), as well as equity. Additional benefits include health care, vision, dental, retirement, PTO, etc.

Are you an Akebian?

An Akebian is curious, empathetic, and values making connections to people and ideas. Akebian’s aren’t afraid of diving in and owning a process or a problem, because we all want to deliver a great solution. Akebian’s believe that we are better together because we are all working toward a common purpose – to better the life of each person impacted by kidney disease. Want to learn more about what it means to be an Akebian? Visit our website: www.akebia.com

Akebia is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes all job applicants. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other characteristics protected by applicable law.

Required Skills

Required Experience

Position Summary:

Provide leadership and management for the quality department and foster the quality philosophy and culture of the company. Establish, maintain, and optimize an effective quality management system. Create and implement a quality plan to achieve the levels of quality established through organizational goals, customer expectations, related stakeholders, and market competition.

General Responsibilities

• Lead the Quality Program
• Assist project teams in the development and execution of all projects.
• Budgetary and operational matters of the Department.
• Responsible for overall Department organization and personnel, development of Company policy and procedure as it relates to quality control of both Code and Non-Code work of the Company, record keeping, licensing and/or accreditation in support of the Company undertakings, personnel training and certification, and direction of the Department in support of the Company’s undertakings.
• Further development and implementation of quality control procedures, methods, and documentation as it applies to the control of the quality of all work performed by the Company.
• Coordinate and communicate with other corporate departments and their managers/supervisors as it relates to quality of all work performed by the Company.
• Establish NDE procedures and manage NDE performed by Company’s own technicians and maintain credentials/certifications for the same. Identify and propose other forms of NDE and NDE certifications that can be an asset to the Company.
• Maintain AWS-CWI certifications and ASNT Central Certificates for NDT. Identify additional certifications and obtain as approved certifications that support our work acquisition efforts and of benefit to the Company.
• Manage the established quality control organization and monitoring of all inspections and applicable documentation/record keeping required by law and codes for the purchasing, assembly, fabrication, repair, and new construction of power generating and industrial boilers, pressure vessels, and high energy pressure piping systems.
• Manage Authorized Inspection Agency and Authorized Inspector services in support of our ASME/NBIC Code undertakings.
• Develop and implement quality control procedures and methods for various other phases of the Company’s work including such items as architectural, civil/structural, electrical, instrumentation, mechanical, and refractory construction.
• Set, monitor, and attain Department goals. Communicate these goals to all ranks in the Department. Conduct regular meetings with Department personnel.
• Responsible for Department personnel decisions and monitoring of performance.
• Ensure proper tools and equipment resources are available to support the commitments.
• Stay current with Industry trends and methods.
• Establish and maintain relationships with third-party agencies and subcontractors in support of the Quality Control Department.
• Review procedures of, and participate in the selection of NDE, Inspection, Engineering, Heat Treating and material supply vendors/subcontractors for work taken on by the Company.
• Identify training and resource improvement opportunities and communicate these to Management for approval and implementation.
• Develop working relationships with customers, both internal and external, to understand customer needs, and specifications and address any issues promptly and efficiently.
• Assume additional responsibilities as directed by division and corporate management. Travel as required to attend, but not limited to, meetings, site visits, training, etc.
• Develop Inspection Test Plans that capture the required codes, standards, and specification requirements, to meet the Customer/contract needs, create inspection hold points, review points and testing criteria for all projects.
• Maintain the Welding Database including Welder Certifications and Continuities, update WPS/PQR and WPQ when code revisions require.
• Maintain the Quality Manuals to reflect all changes in the Codes that apply.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering or Engineering Technology curriculum.
• Minimum 5 years’ experience in quality control inspection associated with construction quality control processes and procedures and inspections associated with fabrication.

OR

• · Minimum 10 years’ experience in construction quality control processes and procedures, inspections, and at least 5 years involving working with Codes and inspections associated with fabrication, installation, and repair of boilers, pressure vessels, and high-energy piping systems.
• · Leadership and motivational skills.
• · Good oral and written communication skills.
• · Safety and safe work culture/leadership.
• · Reasoning and problem-solving ability.
• · Motivated, goal-oriented individual.
• · Business understanding with a balanced approach to technical, business, and people aspects of business.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by people assigned to this classification. They are not intended to be a complete list of all responsibilities, duties and skills required of personnel so classified. Duties and responsibilities may be added or changed as deemed appropriate by management at any time.