About Summit:
Summit Therapeutics Inc. is a biopharmaceutical oncology company with a mission focused on improving quality of life, increasing potential duration of life, and resolving serious unmet medical needs. At Summit, we believe in building a team of world class professionals who are passionate about this mission, and it is our people who drive this mission to reality. Summit’s core values include integrity, passion for excellence, purposeful urgency, collaboration, and our commitment to people. Our employees are truly the heart and soul of our culture, and they are invaluable in shaping our journey toward excellence.
Summit’s team is inspired to touch and help change lives through Summit’s clinical studies in the field of oncology. Summit has multiple global Phase 3 clinical studies, including:
Non-small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC)
HARMONi: Phase 3 clinical study which was intended to evaluate ivonescimab combined with chemotherapy compared to placebo plus chemotherapy in patients with EGFR-mutated, locally advanced or metastatic non-squamous NSCLC who were previously treated with a 3rd generation EGFR TKI.
HARMONi-3: Phase 3 clinical study which is intended to evaluate ivonescimab combined with chemotherapy compared to pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy in patients with first-line metastatic NSCLC.
HARMONi-7: Phase 3 clinical study which is intended to evaluate ivonescimab monotherapy compared to pembrolizumab monotherapy in patients with first-line metastatic NSCLC.
Colorectal Cancer (CRC)
HARMONi-GI3: Phase 3 clinical study intended to evaluate ivonescimab in combination with chemotherapy compared with bevacizumab plus chemotherapy.
Ivonescimab is an investigational therapy not presently approved by any regulatory authority other than China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA). Summit is headquartered in Miami, Florida, and has additional offices in California, New Jersey, the UK, and Ireland.
Overview of Role:
The Director, Global Collaborations Business Operations & Strategy, is a pivotal leader role that sits at the center of Summit’s external partnerships execution, driving the operational, project, and strategic work required to bring combination studies to life with partner pharmaceutical companies. This individual is the primary operational lead for partner-sponsored combinations studies, but also a strategic contributor to externalized operational strategy, clinical study design strategy, and complementing Search & Evaluation diligence.
This leader will work in partnership with the Alliance Management Lead, together forming a core team that owns each external collaboration end-to-end. While the Alliance Management Lead stewards the partner relationship and joint governance, this Director delivers operational depth, cross-functional coordination, and strategy-to-execution translation across each combinations study program.
Position reports to the VP, Business Development & Strategy Alliances, and will be a key member of a comprehensive team working across the arc of external focused growth, strategy to execution. Internally, the Director will mobilize and align a broad global, cross-functional team — Clinical, Research, Biomarker, Program Management, Medical Writing, Regulatory Affairs, CMC/Supply, Quality, Legal, Finance, and others — engaging leaders, SMEs, and executives to ensure every function is focused and synchronized to deliver on partnered programs. The Director role brings visibility, broad scope of work and real ownership: the ideal candidate thrives in a high-agency environment, leads through influence, and brings both the operational rigor and strategic acumen to help Summit build an exceptional external growth engine.
Role and Responsibilities:
Collaborations Operations Leadership & Partner Studies Oversight
- Own operational leadership for externally sponsored combination studies. Assess partner sponsor readiness before activation, establish joint oversight structures, track execution against agreed milestones, and hold both sides accountable to quality and timeline commitments.
- Represent our scientific, operational, and contractual interests in all partner-led studies; engage directly with partner counterparts to resolve start-up gaps, enrollment risks, and compliance issues before they escalate.
- Lead the communication and deliverables for global start-up for externally sponsored combination studies, finalizing study design strategy, supporting documents and materials for partner, protocol and amendment alignment, supply planning, quality and PV agreements, operational progression, issues resolution and reporting and/or dashboards.
- Lead the operational onboarding of new collaboration partners. Establish joint working norms, communication cadences, and escalation frameworks from day one to set each partnership up for durable execution success.
Cross-functional Project Leadership
- Serve as the operational integrator for every combination study. Convene and align functions around shared timelines, role clarity, and joint deliverables in partnership with Alliance Management.
- Drive operational or study decisions and resolve conflicts across functions without direct authority. Leading with influence, engage the right leaders and SMEs at the right time, frame issues clearly, and move teams to resolution with a bias for speed and accountability.
- Represent combination study performance to VP and C-suite leaders in portfolio reviews, development meetings, and executive briefings translating ground-level program status into clear, strategic program narratives.
Partnership with the Alliance Management Lead
- Function as the Alliance Management Lead's operational counterpart and closest working partner. Provide real-time program intelligence, synthesize partner performance insights, and ensure the Alliance Management Lead is always equipped with the operational picture needed for governance and executive conversations.
- Prepare joint briefings for JSC, JDC, and governance meetings; coordinate escalation routing so that working-team issues are resolved at the operational level and strategic issues are surfaced with clear context and recommended paths forward.
- Support alliance health by contributing operational input to alliance reviews, milestone tracking, and obligation calendars. Provide secondary alliance management coverage when needed to maintain continuity and partner confidence.
Strategy to Operational Execution
- One Summit Team: bring an operational and collaboration lens to indication prioritization, combinations planning, and clinical study strategy decisions, ensuring that what the team decides is executable within the partnership framework.
- Support Search & Evaluation activities by providing operational assessments of prospective partner companies and combination opportunities evaluating study design feasibility, operational infrastructure, timeline realism, and fit with our collaboration model.
- Implement the collaboration contract in both strategy and operations translate agreed terms, governance structures, and resource commitments into how studies are designed, resourced, and run.
- All Other duties as assigned.
Experience, Education and Specialized Capabilities:
- Bachelor’s degree in relevant field required; Advanced degree preferred (MBA, Masters, etc.), dual scientific and business background is a strong plus.
- Minimum of 12+ years of experience in drug development in biopharma with demonstrated experience delivering required responsibilities from multiple functional roles; for example, program leadership, alliance management, clinical operations and/or business development.
- Prior oncology drug experience in late-stage development and/or commercial stage required; strong understanding of oncology drug development, scientific platforms, and global dynamics.
- Hands-on experience leading pharma or biotech drug development clinical trial collaboration start-up & management with external partners required.
- Direct experience leading study start-up, kick-off and maintenance in collaborations
- Proficient user of MS Office suite (e.g., PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Project), experience using electronic document management systems, document review tools and can quickly build presentations for leaders/teams.
- Prior experience with technology tools (e.g. Smartsheets, MS Project) in planning, maintenance and communication of information is highly desirable.
- Excellent communicator in public-speaking, meeting facilitation and email communication.
- Ability to excel in a fast-paced, demanding and diverse environment that includes global virtual meetings outside standard business hours.
- Ability to travel to collaboration or business meetings, to include semi-frequent travel to hub office locations in Summit territories or collaboration partner sites.
- This globally oriented role may require unconventional work hours to meet EU, US and Asia time zones as part of weekly activities.
- Role is primarily office-based.
This is the pay for this position
Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor. The total compensation package for this position may also include bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable variable compensation.
Summit does not accept referrals from employment businesses and/or employment agencies in respect of the vacancies posted on this site. All employment businesses/agencies are required to contact Summit’s Talent Acquisition team at [email protected] to obtain prior written authorization before referring any candidates to Summit.
Summit Therapeutics Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer and takes pride in creating and maintaining diverse environment. We do not discriminate in recruitment, hiring, training or promotion or any other employment practices for reasons of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital or veteran status, disability, or any other legally protected status.
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant field
- Advanced degree (MBA, Masters, etc.)
- Minimum of 12+ years of drug development experience in biopharma
- Prior oncology drug experience in late-stage development and/or commercial stage
- Hands-on experience leading pharma/biotech clinical trial collaboration start-up and management with external partners
- Direct experience leading study start-up, kick-off and maintenance in collaborations
- Proficient user of MS Office suite (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Project)
- Experience using electronic document management systems and document review tools
- Prior experience with planning/communication tools (e.g., Smartsheets, MS Project)
- Excellent communication skills including public speaking and meeting facilitation
- Ability to work in a fast-paced, global environment with unconventional hours across time zones
- Ability to travel semi-frequently to hub offices and partner sites
- Role primarily office-based
What We Do
Summit Mission Statement: To build a viable, long-lasting health care organization that assumes full responsibility for designing, developing, trial execution and enrollment, regulatory submission and approval, as well as successful commercialization of patient, physician, caregiver, and societal-friendly medicinal therapy intended to: improve quality of life, increase potential duration of life, and resolve serious medical healthcare needs. To identify and control promising product candidates based on exceptional scientific development and administrational expertise, develop our products in a rapid, cost-efficient manner, and to engage commercialization and/or development partners when appropriate. We accomplish this by building a team of world class professional scientists and business administrators that apply their experience and knowledge to this mission. Team Summit exists to pose, strategize, and execute a path forward in medicinal therapeutic health care that places Summit in a well-deserved, top market share, leadership position. Team Summit assumes full responsibility for stimulating continuous expansion of knowledge, ability, capability, and well-being for all involved stakeholders and highly-valued shareholders. Summit was founded in 2003 and our shares are listed on the Nasdaq Global Market (symbol ‘SMMT’). We are headquartered in Miami, Florida, and we have additional offices in Palo Alto, California, Princeton, New Jersey, Oxford, UK, and Dublin, Ireland.
