Director, Customer & Message Optimization

Job Summary

The Director, Customer & Message Optimization is the platform owner and capability leader for message development, concept testing, and customer segmentation research within BMS's Global Market Research Center of Excellence (CoE). This role is responsible for building, governing, and continuously improving the shared platforms and capability frameworks that Therapeutic Areas (TA) and Business Units (BU) Market Research (MR) teams use to develop, test, and optimize brand messaging, value propositions, and customer engagement strategies across BMS's portfolio.

The leader ensures that the platforms, tools, and capability infrastructure available to TA/BU MR teams are robust, consistent, and evolving in step with the AI‑enabled future of rapid concept and message testing. The most consequential near‑term responsibility of this role is building and governing AI‑enabled self‑serve message testing and concept optimization capabilities that allow teams to move faster, test more, and make better‑informed messaging decisions without sacrificing rigor or comparability.

• Own the Enterprise Message and Concept Testing Capability Platform: build and govern the shared platform infrastructure that TA and BU MR teams use to design, field, and analyze message testing, concept evaluation, value proposition development, and customer segmentation research.
• Define and maintain the platform's structural elements, output formats, and analytical frameworks that are built into message and concept testing tools to ensure cross‑TA comparability without constraining TA‑level design flexibility.
• Own the platform governance model (rules, documentation standards, and escalation processes that govern how TA teams configure, adapt, and report from CoE message and concept testing platforms).
• Partner with the Director, CoE Strategy & AI Innovation on message and concept testing platform vendor requirements and preferred supplier selection, ensuring vendors are governed in a manner consistent with the CoE's broader capability architecture and AI roadmap.
• Lead the AI‑Enabled Message Testing Capability Build: own the platform development roadmap for AI‑enabled and self‑serve message testing and concept optimization tools, sequenced against TA/BU capability needs and CoE platform priorities; define the platform validation framework for AI‑enabled message and concept testing, establishing how AI‑generated outputs are tested for reliability and decision‑readiness before teams adopt new platforms for live programs.
• Work in close partnership with the Director, CoE Strategy & AI Innovation to ensure the AI message testing platform roadmap is grounded in the practical realities of how teams currently design and use message and concept research.
• Support TA/BU MR teams through the adoption of new message testing platforms, providing capability onboarding, user support, and change management as teams transition from traditional vendor‑led approaches to AI‑enabled and self‑serve models.
• Monitor AI message testing platform output quality on an ongoing basis, flagging platform‑level anomalies or reliability concerns to the CoE and relevant TA stakeholders.
• Serve as the CoE's primary advisory resource for TA and BU teams on all message testing and concept optimization platform questions, providing expert guidance on platform configuration, output interpretation, and capability use as requested on a pull basis.
• Partner with TA/BU MR leads to gather message and concept testing platform requirements, test new capabilities, and identify cross‑TA/BU opportunities for shared instrument development or coordinated research approaches.
• Track platform adoption across TA/BU teams, identify barriers to adoption, and work with TA/BU leads to address them, ensuring CoE message and concept testing platforms are used because they add genuine value, not because they are mandated.
• Represent BMS's message and concept testing platform requirements in vendor relationships, ensuring preferred suppliers build and deliver against the platform standards the CoE has established.

• Minimum 8 years of experience in Market Research, commercial…