Senior Director, R&D Capability Enablement

Career Category

Research

Job Description

Join Amgen’s Mission of Serving Patients

At Amgen, if you feel like you’re part of something bigger, it’s because you are. Our shared mission—to serve patients living with serious illnesses—drives all that we do.

Since 1980, we’ve helped pioneer the world of biotech in our fight against the world’s toughest diseases. With our focus on four therapeutic areas –Oncology, Inflammation, General Medicine, and Rare Disease– we reach millions of patients each year. Amgen is advancing a broad and deep pipeline of medicines to treat cancer, heart disease, inflammatory conditions, rare diseases, and obesity and obesity-related conditions. As a member of the Amgen team, you’ll help make a lasting impact on the lives of patients as we research, manufacture, and deliver innovative medicines to help people live longer, fuller happier lives.

Our award-winning culture is collaborative, innovative, and science based. If you have a passion for challenges and the opportunities that lay within them, you’ll thrive as part of the Amgen team. Join us and transform the lives of patients while transforming your career.

Senior Director, R&D Capability Enablement

What you will do

Let’s do this. Let’s change the world. In this vital role you will translate R&D strategy into learning experiences, role readiness, and development opportunities that build workforce capability across R&D. In partnership with R&D leaders and functional learning partners, the role defines how priority capabilities are built, designs the experiences that enable them, and prepares employees to perform successfully.

Working with R&D leaders and subject matter experts, the Senior Director translates business priorities into learning experiences and content that is accurate, useful, and easy to find. The role leads instructional designers, establishes content creation standards and a content management strategy, and uses learning analytics to show leaders what is working, where capability gaps remain, and where to focus investment.

What we expect of you

We are all different, yet we all use our unique contributions to serve patients. The professional we seek is a person with these qualifications.

Key Responsibilities

Capability Strategy & Needs

Partner with R&D leaders to identify current and emerging capability needs tied to scientific priorities, operating plans, and workforce plans.

Use colleague feedback, capability assessments, performance data, and business priorities to identify gaps and sequence learning investments.

Maintain a rolling capability roadmap and review it with R&D leadership at least twice a year.

Learning Experience & Instructional Design Leadership

Lead and develop instructional designers, set portfolio priorities, allocate work, and coach the team on learning design and delivery.

Design role-based learning journeys and pathways, using a 70/20/10 approach where appropriate and drawing on instructor-led, digital, experiential, and coached learning.

Create curricula and end-to-end learning experiences for priority capabilities, including instructional design, content development, and facilitation in partnership with subject matter experts.

R&D Capability Architecture & Framework

Translate leadership-defined R&D priorities into a shared capability architecture and framework, including core capabilities and proficiency expectations.

Partner with leaders across R&D functions, including clinical development, data science, translational science, and research, to align priorities and provide guidance on competencies for critical roles.

Translate the framework into role-based learning architecture, journeys, pathways, and manager resources that functions can use in their day-to-day work.

Use feedback from learners and leaders, along with capability data, to update the framework as R&D needs change.

Performance Readiness

Oversee training governance, training management, and assignment processes for learning owned by Capability Enablement, with clear roles and standards.

Develop end-to-end process learning for priority R&D workflows, partnering with process owners and functional teams on local learning needs.

Define readiness expectations for priority functions and critical roles, and use appropriate checks to understand whether employees can perform required work.

Advanced Capability Programs

Design targeted programs for future-potential and high-potential R&D talent, including internships, rotations, mentorship, and focused development opportunities.

Develop capability academies for priority R&D needs, such as AI application, when they address a defined business need.

Focus these programs on targeted capability acceleration that complements Enterprise talent development and avoids duplicating existing programs.

Learning Analytics & Business Impact

Define measures for each learning goal, including reach, engagement, capability gains, application on the job, and relevant business outcomes.

Create clear dashboards and reports so leaders can see participation, capability progress, persistent gaps, and trends across learning programs.

Evaluate learning investments with appropriate assessments and business measures, explain the findings and their limits, and help leaders make informed prioritization and resourcing decisions.

Content Standards & Management Strategy

Set standards for learning content creation, including clear objectives, instructional design quality, accessibility, scientific accuracy, and subject matter review.

Define a content management strategy for taxonomy, ownership, version control, discoverability, review cadence, archiving, and retirement.

Maintain a curated R&D learning catalog and guide build, buy, reuse, and retirement decisions to reduce duplication and keep resources current.

Operating Model & Functional Learning Partnership

Design a learning operating model with clear governance, decision rights, service expectations, and ownership across central and functional teams.

Partner with each R&D function to tailor enterprise capability builds to local needs through business consulting, prioritized capability builds, and critical-role consultation.

Treat functional learning partnership as an operating approach, not a separate organization, and clarify ownership with R&D functions and Enterprise partners.

Keep Capability Enablement focused on shared capability strategy, priority learning architecture and experiences, and common standards; functional teams retain ownership of local learning needs and process-specific education.

Do not own function-specific competency models for every role, all process learning across R&D, Quality-owned GxP training, employee performance management, or programs that duplicate Enterprise offerings.

Present capability and learning analytics to R&D leaders, connecting results to decisions about priorities and investment.

Basic Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree and 10+ years in learning and development or a related field

Strong expertise in adult learning, instructional design, performance consulting, and digital learning ecosystems.

Experience designing and scaling enterprises or function-wide capability strategies

Preferred Qualifications:

10 years in learning, capability, or organizational development, with significant time inside pharma/biotech R&D.

Demonstrated experience designing, owning, or scaling a capability framework across multiple functions.

Experience leading instructional designers or learning design teams and overseeing the quality of a broad learning portfolio.

Experience designing role-based learning journeys, curricula, academies, or development programs for priority capabilities.

Experience establishing learning content standards, governance, or a content management strategy.

Experience using learning analytics and evaluation to guide decisions and comm