Director, Formulation Development (R&D)
Empower Pharmacy is a visionary healthcare company dedicated to making quality, affordable medication accessible to millions of patients nationwide. As the nation’s most advanced 503A compounding pharmacy and FDA-registered 503B outsourcing facility, we’re redefining what’s possible in personalized medicine and pharmaceutical manufacturing. We’re proud to be recognized as one of Houston’s fastest-growing private companies and ranked #116 in Healthcare & Medical on the Inc. 5000 List for 2025.
Our strength is built on four core values: People, Quality, Service, and Innovation. Guided by these principles, we’ve created a uniquely integrated healthcare platform powered by advanced technology, operational excellence, and a relentless commitment to patient care. From manufacturing and quality control to distribution and customer experience, our teams work together to raise industry standards, expand access to critical medications, and improve outcomes for patients and providers across the country.
At Empower, joining our team means more than starting a new role. It means becoming part of a mission-driven organization that’s transforming healthcare at scale. We invest deeply in our people, encourage bold thinking, and create opportunities for growth, leadership, and innovation at every level. Your ideas matter here, your development is supported, and the work you do has a direct impact on the lives of millions.
If you thrive in a fast-moving, purpose-driven environment where innovation, collaboration, and ambition come together, Empower Pharmacy is the place for you. Let’s transform healthcare together.
Position Summary:
Director, Formulation Development (R&D) is a hands-on scientific expert developing and commercializing sterile injectable and nonsterile formulations across Empower’s 503A and 503B portfolio. The role personally advances products from concept through formulation, stability, packaging, scale-up, technical transfer, and launch across men’s health, women’s health, HRT, weight management, GLP-1, peptides and longevity, sexual health, dermatology, and wellness. Success requires deep compounding expertise, technical problem solving, execution rigor, and learning agility. AI selectively supports research and analysis while scientific judgment remains paramount. PharmD and pharmacist licensure are strongly preferred.
Responsibilities:
Formulation And Product Development
- Formulation Development: Personally develops sterile injectable and nonsterile formulations across Empower’s therapeutic areas, selecting APIs, excipients, concentrations, dosage forms, preparation methods, and packaging based on pharmaceutical science, stability, manufacturability, and commercial requirements.
- Sterile Development: Develops sterile injectables and resolves challenges involving solubility, compatibility, pH, osmolality, sterility, endotoxins, particulate matter, container closure integrity, and aseptic processing.
- Product Optimization: Improves existing formulations, stability, packaging, beyond-use dates, production efficiency, and material utilization while troubleshooting raw-material, excipient, analytical, packaging, and production challenges.
Stability And Analytical Development
- Stability Execution: Designs accelerated and real-time stability programs, establishes testing requirements, evaluates trends, and translates results into formulation, packaging, and beyond-use-date decisions.
- Analytical Evaluation: Evaluates assay, pH, osmolality, particulate matter, sterility, endotoxins, antimicrobial effectiveness, and container closure integrity while coordinating internal and external analytical testing.
- Technical Research: Conducts formulation research, literature reviews, and excipient evaluations for new products, using AI selectively to accelerate research while validating conclusions through scientific judgment and experimentation.
Scale Up And Commercialization
- Process Development: Converts laboratory formulations into scalable production processes by establishing compounding methods, process parameters, equipment requirements, packaging configurations, specifications, and production instructions.
- Technology Transfer: Transfers formulations into 503A and 503B operations, partnering with MSAT, Manufacturing, Quality, and Validation to resolve technical challenges and ensure repeatable production.
- Launch Execution: Personally advances products through feasibility, formulation, testing, stability, packaging, production implementation, and launch while prioritizing projects based on technical feasibility, market demand, and business impact.
Quality And Regulatory Execution
- Regulatory Alignment: Develops formulations consistent with applicable 503A/503B requirements, USP standards, sterile compounding expectations, cGMP principles, and Empower quality systems.
- Documentation Rigor: Creates accurate, traceable, and inspection-ready formulation records, protocols, specifications, technical reports, SOPs, development summaries, and transfer documentation.
- Risk Resolution: Identifies and resolves formulation, sterility, stability, packaging, analytical, raw-material, and manufacturing risks through structured experimentation, root-cause investigation, and technical problem solving.
Portfolio And Cross Functional Execution
- Portfolio Development: Translates provider demand, market opportunities, emerging therapies, and portfolio gaps into development opportunities across men’s health, women’s health, HRT, GLP-1, weight management, peptides, longevity, sexual health, dermatology, and wellness.
- Stakeholder Partnership: Works directly with Pharmacy, Production, Quality, Regulatory, MSAT, Analytical, Procurement, and Commercial teams to move formulations rapidly from concept into routine operations.
- Technical Ownership: Serves as a hands-on formulation expert who personally solves complex development problems and drives projects through completion while providing technical guidance to colleagues.
Knowledge and Skills:
- Deep hands-on expertise in 503A/503B formulation development, sterile injectables, nonsterile compounding, pharmaceutical bases, excipients, stability, scale-up, and technical transfer.
- Strong formulation knowledge across HRT, GLP-1, weight management, peptides, longevity, sexual health, dermatology, wellness, and men’s and women’s health.
- Advanced ability to design stability studies, interpret analytical results, troubleshoot formulations, and translate scientific findings into reproducible production processes.
- Strong knowledge of USP standards, aseptic compounding, cGMP principles, technical documentation, and pharmaceutical development practices.
Experience and Qualifications:
- PharmD and active pharmacist license are strongly preferred.
- 8+ years of pharmacy, formulation development, or compounding experience with substantial 503A and/or 503B experience preferred.
- Significant hands-on sterile injectable and nonsterile development experience, including stability, aseptic processing, scale-up, troubleshooting, and technical transfer.
- Demonstrated experience personally taking compounded products from concept through formulation, testing, stability, production implementation, and launch.
- Proven ability to independently solve complex formulation challenges and execute a high-volume development portfolio within a rapidly scaling compounding environment.
Key Competencies:
- Customer Focus: Builds trust through customer-centric solutions.
- Strategic AI: Guides responsible AI adoption and adaptation.
- Optimizes Work Processes: Drives efficiency with continuous improvement.
- Collaborates: Partners effectively to achieve shared goals.
- Resourcefulness: Secures and deploys resources efficiently.
- Manages Complexity: Simplifies and solves complex challenges.
- Ensures Accountability: Delivers on commitments with integrity.
- Situational Adaptability: Adjusts approach to shifting conditions.
- Communicates Effectively: Tailors messages to diverse audiences.
Values:
- People: Empowering people defines who we are.
- Quality: Excellence in every product, every time.
- Service: Serving others is our highest purpose.
- Innovation: Advancing care through technology and discovery.
Employee Benefits, Health, and Wellness:
We offer comprehensive benefits to support your health, well-being, and future, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, paid time off, 401(k) matching, wellness perks, IV therapy, and compounded medications. Learn more: https://careers.empowerpharmacy.com/benefits/
Physical Requirements:
While performing the responsibilities of the job, the employee is required to talk and hear. The employee is often required to remain in a stationary position for a significant amount of the workday and frequently use their hands and fingers to handle or feel in order to access, input, and retrieve information from the computer and other office productivity devices. Employees are regularly required to move about the office and around the corporate campus. The employee is regularly required to stand, walk, reach with arms and hands, climb or balance, and to stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl.