Job Description

The Director, Organization & Talent Partner (OTP), Animal Health LATAM region and Brazil, serves as a strategic organization and talent advisor to the VP, AH Latin America and their leadership team as well as the AVP General Manager of Brazil and their leadership team. The role architects the long-term organization agenda for this AH area of business into a forward-looking organization, workforce enablement, and talent strategy, helping ensure the supported organization has the structures, capabilities, leadership, talent pipelines and ways of working needed to deliver its priorities. The role uses data and insight to frame choices, leads organization and workforce initiatives within the assigned scope, and commissions the right expertise to bring strategy into execution.

The Director achieves impact through strategic consulting, subject-matter expertise, influence, collaboration and effective orchestration of resources across the HR operating model. The role may provide project leadership, coaching, work direction or subject-matter guidance to colleagues without formal people-management accountability.

This role is a member of the AH HR leadership team and works in close collaboration across the Animal Health HR team, and guides and influences in-country Enterprise Team HR partners throughout the region to execute against the strategic plan.

Primary accountabilities

Shape the agenda:

• Understand, anticipate and translate business strategy into the long-term organization and talent agenda.
• Lead organization capability planning so structures, roles and capabilities are ready for where the business is going.
• Drive strategic workforce planning linked to business direction and transformation.

Develop the organization and its leaders

• Enable talent development strategy, including succession and leadership development for critical populations.
• Coach senior leaders to improve organizational effectiveness, leadership impact and talent decisions.
• Support transformational efforts from an organization and talent perspective.
• Act as steward in organizational effectiveness, driving stronger collaboration across functions and clarity in interfaces, so priorities connect rather than compete.

Leverage the HR operating model to bring strategy into execution

• Be accountable for the strategy and execution of macro-level organizational change and transformation, and ensure the right partnerships are activated to deliver successful execution.
• Continually engage with ETHR to provide ongoing context on business priorities and dynamics; strive to connect organization and talent priorities across divisions and countries.
• Seek to understand local nuances and considerations when defining organization and talent strategy and execution plans.

Experience, capabilities and leadership characteristics

The successful candidate will bring strong strategic HR experience in a large, complex organization and a record of shaping outcomes through influence. The role requires the following capabilities and leadership characteristics:

• Business savviness: bring deep business understanding to translate strategy into differentiated organization, workforce and talent priorities .
• Organization development and effectiveness: diagnose how well the organization is working and take action to close the gaps and strengthen effectiveness, using the OCP playbook and OD team resources.
• Talent growth and senior-leader coaching: anticipate talent and capability gaps in critical populations well before they become urgent and shape the succession and development plans that close them.
• Influence and executive communication: effectively frame and communicate complex or sensitive issues clearly and confidently to stakeholders and partners to ensure effective action is taken, ability to build a compelling case, frame complex or sensitive issues clearly and confidently, and align senior stakeholders without relying on formal authority.
• Change catalyst leadership: drive the organizational and cultural shifts your strategy requires, championing new approaches and helping people move through resistance to get there.
• Networking, partnerships: effectively navigate the organization, delivering through trusted partnerships across the HR Operating Model.
• Systems Thinking: see the organization as a connected system — understand the interdependencies between businesses, functions and regions, and read data and signals across them to find the patterns that shape the org and talent agenda.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in human resources, Business or a related discipline required.
• Minimum of ten (10) years of progressive HR or closely related business experience, including strategic HR partnership experience in a complex, global environment.
• Demonstrated experience advising and influencing senior leaders and leadership teams.
• Demonstrated experience in strategic workforce planning, organization capability planning, organization design and development, talent and succession, and transformation.
• Experience supporting animal health pharmaceutical, life sciences, manufacturing, commercial or other science-based organization is preferred.
• Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries and commission work through a networked operating model.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, facilitation capability, business judgment and analytical capability.
• Full professional proficiency in English is required. Fluency in Portuguese and/or Spanish is strongly preferred.
• Ability to travel 25% throughout the region is required and infrequent travel to other regions is occasionally required.

Relocation within LATAM may be available for the successful candidate, subject to business needs and company mobility policies.

Required Skills:

Benefits Administration, Benefits Administration, Business Decisions, Business Structures, Candidate Sourcing, Change Management, Coaching, Compensation Program Design, Compensation Strategies, Confidential Data Handling, Corporate Recruiting, Digital Learning, Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), HR Legal Compliance, Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), Human Resource Management, Human Resources (HR) Technology, Learning and Development (L&D), Organizational Management (OM), People Management, Presentation Delivery, Project Management, Recruitment Marketing, Relationship Building, Stakeholder Management {+ 8 more}

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

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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:

International

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

25%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

na

Job Posting End Date:

10/9/2026

*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.