Job detail for Associate Director, Learning & Development

Job Description

The Associate Director, Learning & Development is a critical catalyst for change, driving both enterprise-wide upskilling and disease learning initiatives that will shape the future of our organization. We are seeking a dynamic and strategic Learning & Development leader to revolutionize employee upskilling, foster a culture of continuous learning, and propel our company to new heights.

As the Learning & Development Lead for the Canadian subsidiary, you will report to the Director Learning and Development (Europe/Canada). You will have the opportunity to guide our local team of dedicated L&D professionals and ensure effective and efficient learning experiences for our employees.

We are looking for a team player with strong strategic thinking capabilities, visionary perspectives, and executional drive. You have a strong passion for cultural transformation, change management, and employee experience. You have a proven track record of fueling leadership skills, developing commercial capabilities, and ensuring product & disease acumen. You thrive by working at the interface of our people and our business, love solving challenges together in a team, empowering your own team, experimenting and being able to translate those learnings into a long-term vision and strategy for our organization.

Join us in this pivotal role as we transform our company into a learning organization, equipped with the latest scientific advancements and poised for success in the ever-evolving market.

---

• Shape and execute the learning and capability-building strategy for our company in line with business priorities.
• Partner with leaders to identify capability gaps and develop solutions that improve performance, leadership effectiveness and organizational growth.
• Plan and deliver learning solutions that accelerate sales force readiness, enhance omnichannel execution, and support critical product launch strategies.
• Own and continuously evolve the sales and marketing training curriculum, ensuring customer-facing teams build the capabilities, confidence, and executional discipline needed to deliver business priorities.
• Lead product and disease learning strategy and execution in close partnership with Medical, Marketing, and Sales, ensuring learning is scientifically accurate, business-relevant, compliant, and embedded into field execution.
• Partner with brand and launch teams to translate product strategies, disease state insights, competitive context, and customer needs into practical learning experiences that improve sales and marketing effectiveness.
• Introduce innovative learning approaches, tools and methodologies that enhance employee development and engagement.
• Measure learning impact and continuously improve programs using data and business insights.
• Build strong partnerships across local and global stakeholders to foster a culture of continuous learning.
• Serve as a visionary leader and mentor, guiding a passionate L&D team towards a shared purpose and encouraging innovation.
• Coach, motivate, and support your team members' personal and professional growth.
• Foster a positive working environment, promoting open communication and collaboration across your team, our Canadian market teams as well as the global team.

Key Competencies

• Business Insight: Understands business priorities and translates them into capability-building strategies that create measurable value, with specific strength in connecting sales, marketing, product, and disease learning to commercial outcomes.
• Strategic Mindset: Anticipates future capability needs and develops learning approaches that support long-term business success.
• Cultivates Innovation: Brings fresh thinking, embraces new ideas and continuously seeks better ways to develop people and teams.
• Collaborates: Builds trusted partnerships across functions, markets and global teams to achieve shared goals.
• Drives Results: Focuses on execution, accountability and delivering meaningful business outcomes.

What we are looking for (your qualifications):

• Bachelor's degree (required) in a relevant field (e.g., Business, Life Sciences, Education).
• Experience in Learning & Development, Capability Building, Commercial Excellence or a related field.
• Life sciences (pharmaceutical, biotech, medtech) experience in sales and/or marketing.
• Demonstrated experience designing or leading sales training, marketing capability development, product learning, and disease state education for customer-facing teams.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical , including launch planning, brand strategy, field force effectiveness, omnichannel engagement, and compliant scientific exchange.
• Experience working in a dynamic and innovation-driven environment and a proven ability to quickly adapt to an evolving business context and learn new skills.
• Ability to translate business priorities into practical and impactful learning and capability building programs.
• Ability to convert complex scientific, disease, and product information into clear, practical, and behavior-changing learning experiences for sales and marketing audiences.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, including experience working with senior leaders.
• People management experience.
• Fluency in French is required.

This job posting is for an existing vacancy position.

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $124,400 – $174,400 CAD. At our company, we are firmly committed to provide fair and equitable pay for similar work and experience as a fundamental aspect of our workplace culture. Individual employee salaries will be based on several factors such as relevant experience, skills & proficiency, and/or other bona fide factors relative to appropriate internal comparators.

At our Company, we lead with people. This role includes eligibility to our discretionary short-term-incentive plan which fosters a pay-for-performance culture. Also, our contemporary rewards and benefit programs go beyond traditional medical plans and retirement programs, to create a flexible, inclusive workplace to support employee well-being, development and long-term success.

We may use artificial intelligence and automated tools to support our recruitment process. AI tools are used to support, but not replace, human judgment. All hiring decisions are made by our hiring managers.

We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing diverse, talented, and committed people together. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when diverse ideas come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively. We are an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace.

We encourage applications from all qualified candidates. In accordance with our accommodation policies and applicable provincial and federal accessibility legislation, we are committed to providing reasonable accommodation throughout the recruitment process.

Required Skills:

Adult Learning Principles, Content Creation, Continuous Learning, Cultural Transformations, Employee Experience, Implementation Management, Instructional Design, Leadership, Learning and Development (L&D), Pharmaceutical Sales, Pharmaceuticals Marketing, Project Execution Plan, Sales Training, Strategic Thinking, Teamwork, Training and Development, Training Delivery

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

Secondary Language(s) Job Description:

The Associate Director Learning & Development is a critical catalyst for change, driving both enterprise-wide upskilling and disease learning initiatives that will shape the future of our organization. We are seeking a dynamic and strategic Learning & Development leader to revolutionize employee upskilling, foster a culture of continuous learning, and propel our company to new heights.

As the Learning & Development Lead for the Canadian subsidiary, you will report to the Director Learning and Development (Europe/Canada). You will have the opportunity to guide our local team of dedicated L&D professionals and ensure effective and efficient learning experiences for our employees.

We are looking for a team player with strong strategic thinking capabilities, visionary perspectives, and executional drive. You have a strong passion for cultural transformation, change management, and employee experience. You have a proven track record of fueling leadership skills, developing commercial capabilities, and ensuring product & disease acumen. You thrive by working at the interface of our people and our business, love solving challenges together in a team, empowering your own team, experimenting and being able to translate those learnings into a long-term vision and strategy for our organization.

Join us in this pivotal role as we transform our company into a learning organization, equipped with the latest scientific advancements and poised for success in the ever-evolving market.

---

• Shape and execute the learning and capability-building strategy for our company in line with business priorities.
• Partner with leaders to identify capability gaps and develop solutions that improve performance, leadership effectiveness and organizational growth.
• Plan and deliver learning solutions that accelerate sales force readiness, enhance omnichannel execution, and support critical product launch strategies.
• Own and continuously evolve the sales and marketing training curriculum, ensuring customer-facing teams build the capabilities, confidence, and executional discipline needed to deliver business priorities.
• Lead product and disease learning strategy and execution in close partnership with Medical, Marketing, and Sales, ensuring learning is scientifically accurate, business-relevant, compliant, and embedded into field execution.
• Partner with brand and launch teams to translate product strategies, disease state insights, competitive context, and customer needs into practical learning experiences that improve sales and marketing effectiveness.
• Introduce innovative learning approaches, tools and methodologies that enhance employee development and engagement.
• Measure learning impact and continuously improve programs using data and business insights.
• Build strong partnerships across local and global stakeholders to foster a culture of continuous learning.
• Serve as a visionary leader and mentor, guiding a passionate L&D team towards a shared purpose and encouraging innovation.
• Coach, motivate, and support your team members' personal and professional growth.
• Foster a positive working environment, promoting open communication and collaboration across your team, our Canadian market teams as well as the global team.

Key Competencies

• Business Insight: Understands business priorities and translates them into capability-building strategies that create measurable value, with specific strength in connecting sales, marketing, product, and disease learning to commercial outcomes.
• Strategic Mindset: Anticipates future capability needs and develops learning approaches that support long-term business success.
• Cultivates Innovation: Brings fresh thinking, embraces new ideas and continuously seeks better ways to develop people and teams.
• Collaborates: Builds trusted partnerships across functions, markets and global teams to achieve shared goals.
• Drives Results: Focuses on execution, accountability and delivering meaningful business outcomes.

What we are looking for (your qualifications):

• Bachelor's degree (required) in a relevant field (e.g., Business, Life Sciences, Education)
• Experience in Learning & Development, Capability Building, Commercial Excellence or a related field.
• Life sciences (pharmaceutical, biotech, medtech) experience in sales and/or marketing.
• Demonstrated experience designing or leading sales training, marketing capability development, product learning, and disease state education for customer-facing teams.
• Strong understanding of pharmaceutical , including launch planning, brand strategy, field force effectiveness, omnichannel engagement, and compliant scientific exchange.
• Experience working in a dynamic and innovation-driven environment and a proven ability to quickly adapt to an evolving business context and learn new skills
• Ability to translate business priorities into practical and impactful learning and capability building programs.
• Ability to convert complex scientific, disease, and product information into clear, practical, and behavior-changing learning experiences for sales and marketing audiences.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, including experience working with senior leaders.
• People management experience.
• Fluency in French is required

This job posting is for an existing vacancy position.

The anticipated base salary range for this position is $124,400 – $174,400 CAD. At our company, we are firmly committed to provide fair and equitable pay for similar work and experience as a fundamental aspect of our workplace culture. Individual employee salaries will be based on several factors such as relevant experience, skills & proficiency, and/or other bona fide factors relative to appropriate internal comparators.

At our Company, we lead with people. This role includes eligibility to our discretionary short-term-incentive plan which fosters a pay-for-performance culture. Also, our contemporary rewards and benefit programs go beyond traditional medical plans and retirement programs, to create a flexible, inclusive workplace to support employee well-being, development and long-term success.

We may use artificial intelligence and automated tools to support our recruitment process. AI tools are used to support, but not replace, human judgment. All hiring decisions are made by our hiring managers.

We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing diverse, talented, and committed people together. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when diverse ideas come together in an inclusive environment.

We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively. We are an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace.

We encourage applications from all qualified candidates. In accordance with our accommodation policies and applicable provincial and federal accessibility legislation, we are committed to providing reasonable accommodation throughout the recruitment process.

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully

Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

25%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

10/7/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.