Vice President, Program Team Lead

Position Overview

The Vice President, Program Team Lead, is a strategic program team leader for ficerafusp alfa and will be responsible for establishing the long-term vision and strategy while enabling teams to achieve strong execution of the program plan. You will provide leadership across drug development and commercialization ensuring achievement of program goals. The ideal candidate will be a strategic leader well-versed in drug development and a strong influencer who can integrate effectively and align stakeholders across different functions and levels both internally and externally. Reporting to the Chief Development Officer, you will champion critical portions of the ficerafusp alfa program with significant executive visibility and potential for patient impact globally.

This role is based in our Boston office and follows a hybrid schedule, with three in-office days each week.

Responsibilities

• As Program Team Lead the cross-functional team of leaders responsible for setting and achieving the long-term vision for ficerafusp alfa
• Incorporate the long-term vision from early development onwards enabling us to optimize clinical development plans across therapeutic indications
• Oversee the development of cross functional strategic plans to develop, register, and commercialize ficerafusp alfa
• Integrate cross functional perspectives, ensuring scientific rigor, emerging clinical data, competition, and the evolving landscape in key markets are incorporated routinely to inform program direction
• Work with the functional leads and senior leadership to set program goals aligned with corporate goals
• Mentor program managers responsible for oversight of execution of the CDP
• Serve as thought leader for alliance execution and relationship management
• Build and maintain strong, collaborative relationships with external partners, acting as the primary point of contact and resolving conflicts between organizations
• Foster strong cross functional team performance, empowering the team while driving alignment, accountability, prioritization, and timely decision making to deliver on program and corporate goals
• On an ongoing basis, proactively anticipate issues and ensure contingency plans are put in place; identify barriers and problem-solve to mitigate them; identify opportunities and how to capture them
• Communications: Champion the ficerafusp alfa program and provide critical updates between the teams and senior leaders, ensuring strategic alignment and awareness of changes to strategy or timelines
• Partner with senior leadership on long-range planning, enabling accurate projections, financial and portfolio analyses to inform resource allocation
• Serve as an external ambassador, fostering broad engagement to cultivate strategic KOL relationships and enabling overall integration of external insights to inform strategy
• Ensure ongoing monitoring of the competitive landscape, synthesis, and communication of program implications is incorporated into strategic program imperatives
• Partner with corporate communications and the Executive Team to develop communication strategies, positioning, and messaging
• Drive innovation by challenging the status quo and seeking internal and external best practices, contributing to strategic thinking at the program

Qualifications

• BA/BS degree required
• 12 years of industry experience with 8 years leading drug development programs
• Experience leading late-stage programs through commercialization
• Advanced degree preferred (e.g., MBA, PharmD, PhD, MD, MPH, MS)
• Broad and deep understanding of drug development, registration and pre-commercialization
• Fully and consistently demonstrates strong communication skills across all levels and functions – able to succinctly summarize complex issues (verbally and in writing) to move team forward serving as a role model for others
• Fully and consistently demonstrates strategic prioritization – helping teams to pivot and manage competing priorities and changing needs in fast-paced environment – providing clarity of direction to the team
• An authentic leader who builds and maintains strong relationships and trust, with exceptional ability to influence key stakeholders at all
• Ability to inspire, empower and motivate teams often without direct authority to cultivate high performance by creating a boundary-less environment that invites diverse perspectives, continual improvement, and opportunistic thinking
• Ability to attract, retain and develop talent, either as a manager or a leader of a cross functional team

Company Overview

Bicara Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to bringing transformative bifunctional therapies to patients with solid tumors. Bicara’s lead program, ficerafusp alfa, is a bifunctional antibody that combines two clinically validated targets, an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) directed monoclonal antibody with a domain that binds to human transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β). Through this dual-targeting mechanism, ficerafusp alfa has the potential to exert potent anti-tumor activity by simultaneously blocking both cancer cell-intrinsic EGFR survival and proliferation, as well as the immunosuppressive TGF-β signaling within the tumor microenvironment. Ficerafusp alfa is being developed in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, where there remains a significant unmet need, as well as other solid tumor types. For more information, please visit www.bicara.com or follow us on LinkedIn or X.

Here at Bicara, we believe in building diverse teams and cultivating a culture where all voices are included. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.

Bicara Therapeutics is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any classification protected by federal, state, or local law.