BC Sector-Life Sciences-ED

At EY, you’ll have the chance to build a career as unique as you are, with the global scale, support, inclusive culture and technology to become the best version of you. And we’re counting on your unique voice and perspective to help EY become even better, too. Join us and build an exceptional experience for yourself, and a better working world for all. 

Job Description

Position Summary    

The GDS Forecasting COE Leader is a senior leadership role accountable for building, scaling, and running a Center of Excellence dedicated to commercial forecasting services for Life Sciences clients. The role sits at the intersection of consulting go-to-market growth, delivery, analytics capability-building, and commercial performance. It owns the COE talent and methodology backbone and positions forecasting as a differentiated offering within the broader Life Sciences practice. Reporting to the Life Sciences GDS Leader, the role is the primary escalation point for client delivery quality and internal capability development.

Essential Functions of the job          

Go-to-Market

• Partner with solution, account, and sector leaders to identify, shape, and pursue forecasting-led opportunities across existing and prospective client accounts.
• Lead or co-lead proposal development, including solution design, pricing strategy, and staffing plans for forecasting engagements and RFPs.
• Build reusable forecasting assets including accelerators, frameworks, demo models, and points of view to reduce proposal cycle time and improve win rates.
• Represent the COE in client pitches, oral presentations, and executive discussions.
• Track and report the COE sales pipeline, win/loss trends, revenue contribution, and forecast to Life Sciences leadership.
• Develop and publish thought leadership, benchmarking studies, and conference content to establish market credibility.
• Identify and evaluate strategic alliances with forecasting technology and data partners to strengthen the solution stack.

Delivery

• Own the quality, accuracy, and timeliness of forecasting deliverables across COE-supported engagements.
• Lead engagements spanning customized platform or solution development and forecasting managed services.
• Establish and enforce model validation, assumption documentation, MAPE/accuracy tracking, peer review, and audit-readiness standards.
• Define and continuously refine forecasting methodologies, matching the approach to the business question and available data.
• Provide technical oversight over gross-to-net modeling, loss-ofexclusivity impact, TRx/NBRx trends, market sizing, competitive dynamics, and related parameters.
• Manage engagement economics, including utilization, effort estimates, and margin performance.
• Build and mentor a multi-tiered team from analysts through senior managers, balancing pharmaceutical commercial expertise and analytics capability.
• Institutionalize lessons learned, client feedback, and forecast-accuracy post-mortems into refreshed playbooks and training.
• Guide adoption of forecasting platforms and tools, including AI-first and agentic forecasting architectures where relevant.
• Act as the escalation point for at-risk engagements and resolve delivery, staffing, or client relationship issues.

Analytical/Decision Making Responsibilities       

• Determine the appropriate forecasting methodology, model architecture, data sources, validation approach, and governance level for complex client needs.
• Prioritize investments across talent, assets, platforms, alliances, and adjacent capabilities based on pipeline, scalability, and expected value.
• Balance growth, quality, utilization, margin, and talent sustainability across the COE portfolio.
• Make senior interventions on at-risk engagements and decide when models, assumptions, staffing, or delivery plans require correction.
• Translate quantitative model outputs and uncertainty into clear commercial decisions and executive narratives.

Education & Experience                   

• MBA or equivalent postgraduate qualification in Business, Statistics, Economics, Life Sciences, or a related field from a reputed institution; an advanced quantitative degree is a plus.
• 14+ years of overall experience, including at least 8-10 years in pharmaceutical or Life Sciences commercial forecasting.
• Experience in a top-tier consulting firm, pharmaceutical commercial analytics function, or specialized forecasting firm is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience building or scaling a COE, practice area, or specialized delivery team, including P&L or revenue accountability.
• Proven client-facing delivery leadership across complex, multi-market forecasting engagements.
• Experience managing large, distributed teams across onshore-offshore delivery models.

Knowledge and Skills Requirements 

• Deep expertise in pharmaceutical commercial forecasting, including MAPE, gross-to-net, loss of exclusivity, TRx/NBRx, market share dynamics, and epidemiology- and analogue-based methods.
• Strong familiarity with pharmaceutical data platforms and datasets, including IQVIA, Komodo Health, Symphony Health, claims, and EHR data.
• Proficiency in Excel modeling, R, Python, and forecasting-specific platforms; familiarity with AI/ML forecasting and agentic AI applications is highly desirable.
• Strong business development capability across proposal writing, client pitching, pricing, and senior relationship management.
• Proven people leadership across team building, performance management, mentoring, and capability development.
• Executive presence and the ability to translate complex quantitative outputs into clear business narratives.
• Understanding of the broader Life Sciences commercial ecosystem, including market access, patient engagement, and competitive intelligence.
• Strong governance and risk orientation, with attention to model accuracy, documentation rigor, and audit readiness.

EY | Building a better working world 

 
EY exists to build a better working world, helping to create long-term value for clients, people and society and build trust in the capital markets.  

 
Enabled by data and technology, diverse EY teams in over 150 countries provide trust through assurance and help clients grow, transform and operate.  

 
Working across assurance, consulting, law, strategy, tax and transactions, EY teams ask better questions to find new answers for the complex issues facing our world today.