Director, HR Business Partner (Boston)

We are seeking a strategic, influential, and agile HR Business Partner Director to lead talent strategies for key Global Medicines Development (GMDA) functions at Vertex. This Director will play a critical role in achieving the GMDA vision of enhancing leadership, driving innovation, enabling top-tier execution, and integrating technology to achieve superior performance across a diverse development pipeline. This role will serve as a trusted advisor to GMDA leaders and their leadership teams, shaping organizational design, culture, and workforce strategies that enable clinical development innovation, execution and long term pipeline success. Reporting to the Lead HRBP for the Chief Medical Officer and the Global Medicines Development organization, this individual will sit on GMDA functional leadership teams and play a critical role in driving enterprise-wide HR initiatives and change leadership, enabling organizational effectiveness across clinical development functions. This role shapes and executes talent strategies that strengthen leadership, enable scientific excellence, and support Vertex's mission to bring transformative therapies to patients.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic & Organizational Leadership

• Serve as a thought partner to GMDA senior leadership; contribute to functional strategy with talent, organizational, and culture insights.

• Anticipate organizational needs across development functions, recommending structure, capabilities, and workforce strategies to enable program success.

• Lead organizational design efforts to support portfolio growth, regulatory milestones, country expansion, and long-range planning.

• Use data and insights to influence decision-making around resourcing, span of control, efficiency, and succession.

Workforce Transformation, Automation & AI Enablement

• Partner with GMDA leadership to rethink workforce design in light of emerging AI, automation, and technology, capabilities.

• Assess roles, skills, processes, and organizational structures to identify opportunities for AI enabled efficiency, including workflow automation, data driven decision support, and elimination or redesign of low value manual work.

• Collaborate with cross functional teams (e.g., DTE, Talent COE) to ensure GMDA organizations are future-ready with the right capabilities, spans/layers, and operating models.

• Lead workforce planning efforts that incorporate AI-augmented job design, talent upskilling, and reskilling pathways to ensure teams can fully leverage new technologies.

• Guide leaders through change adoption, ensuring employees have the mindset, tools, and capabilities needed to operate effectively in an increasingly automated and analytical environment.

• Anticipate workforce impacts of new technology and partner closely with PX Advisors and relevant COEs when role changes may result from automation, applying all appropriate guidelines and internal processes.

Enterprise Talent Leadership

• Lead annual talent cycles for GMDA functions: succession, performance, promotions, compensation, and leadership pipelines.

• Ensure fair, consistent, behavior and results-based assessment practices, and partner with COEs to mitigate bias.

• Coach leaders on talent investments, mobility, pipelines, and organizational bench strength.

Leader Coaching & Advisory

• Serve as a trusted coach to senior GMDA leaders, enabling stronger people leadership, effective decision making, and high performance teams

Workforce Planning & Organizational Health

• Lead multiyear capability planning tied to pipeline, regulatory filings, and lifecycle management

• Analyze organizational health indicators, engagement data, talent flows, and workday talent insights to drive targeted action plans.

• Shape GMDA workforce strategy to ensure alignment with global footprint, functional maturity, and scientific needs.

Compensation & Job Architecture Partnership

• Advise leaders on job leveling, architecture, and compensation frameworks; partner with Compensation COE for annual processes.

• Support consistent application of guidelines across GMDA teams, including global teams with diverse market norms.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years progressive HR experience, including HRBP support for scientific, clinical, or highly regulated functions OR experience in an HR Center of Excellence (e.g. Organizational Design, Talent Development, etc.)

• Deep experience advising senior leaders and leading enterprise talent processes.

• Strong organizational design capability and experience navigating matrixed R&D organizations.

• Ability to interpret complex business, scientific, and portfolio data to inform organizational decisions.

• Demonstrated expertise in change leadership and coaching.

• Excellent judgment, discretion, and relationship management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting global clinical development, PV/safety, biometrics, or GxP impacted teams.

• Experience leading or supporting workforce transformation initiatives involving automation, digital enablement, or AI augmented work, ideally within clinical development, medical affairs, biometrics, or other scientific/regulated environments.

• Background partnering with Digital/Tech, Data Science, or Analytics teams to understand technological impacts on roles, skills, org design, and future capability needs.

• Master's degree in HR, Business, Organizational Psychology, or related field.

• Experience in high-growth biotechnology or pharmaceutical environments.