Director, Upstream Marketing

Saluda Medical is a commercial‑stage medical device company focused on developing treatments for chronic neurological conditions using its novel closed‑loop neuromodulation platform. The company’s proprietary technology senses and measures neural responses to stimulation and automatically adjusts therapy based on real‑time neurophysiological feedback.

Saluda Medical’s first product, the Evoke® System, is designed to deliver known, consistent, and personalized spinal cord stimulation therapy by objectively measuring neural responses and maintaining therapy within a prescribed therapeutic window. Saluda Medical is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

At Saluda, we challenge boundaries. We innovate and think beyond the conventional. Our focus is to revolutionize the standard of care in neuromodulation to positively impact patient’s lives.

The Director of Upstream Marketing will own Saluda's product portfolio strategy and the pipeline of new products, serving as the voice of the market inside the company. This leader will define where Saluda plays next, identifying unmet clinical needs, shaping product requirements, building business cases, and guiding new products from concept through development to launch readiness.

Reporting to the VP of Marketing, this role partners closely with R&D, Clinical, Regulatory, and Finance to prioritize the pipeline, and with Downstream Marketing and Sales to ensure a seamless handoff from development to commercialization. It is a high-visibility role that directly shapes Saluda's multi-year growth trajectory.

• Own the multi-year product portfolio strategy and roadmap across the Evoke platform and adjacent opportunities, aligned to corporate growth objectives
• Continuously assess portfolio performance, lifecycle position, and white-space opportunities; recommend investment, sustain, and sunset decisions
• Lead portfolio planning and prioritization with executive leadership, balancing near‑term line extensions against longer‑horizon platform bets
• Maintain a rigorous view of competitive pipelines, emerging technologies, and clinical trends in neuromodulation and adjacent therapy areas

• Identify and validate unmet needs through voice‑of‑customer research, KOL engagement, procedural observation, and market analysis
• Translate market insights into clear product requirements, target product profiles, and user needs documents for R&D
• Build and defend business cases for new product concepts, including market sizing, adoption modeling, pricing assumptions, and financial projections
• Serve as the marketing lead on core/phase‑gate development teams, representing the customer and commercial perspective through design, verification, and validation
• Partner with Clinical and Regulatory on evidence strategy and claims development to ensure new products launch with a compelling, defensible value proposition

• Define launch strategy, positioning, and geographic sequencing for pipeline products well ahead of commercialization, spanning U.S. and OUS markets
• Lead the structured handoff to Downstream Marketing and Sales, ensuring launch plans, claims, and training foundations are in place
• Support limited market releases and early evaluator programs; capture feedback and drive iteration before full launch

• Serve as the company's authority on market dynamics: market models, share tracking, customer segmentation, and procedural trends
• Build and manage KOL and physician advisory relationships to pressure‑test concepts and shape the pipeline
• Mentor and develop upstream marketing talent as the function scales; manage direct reports as assigned
• Champion…