Director, Sales - Japan

When you make an impact, you help improve outcomes for healthcare professionals and the patients they serve.

Wolters Kluwer Health's clinical decision support and drug data solutions — including UpToDate, Medi-Span and Lexidrug — are used by clinicians and healthcare institutions across Japan and  worldwide to make better decisions at the point of care.

Our AI-enabled clinical decision support capability is bringing a significant increase in the value that we offer new and existing customers.

The Director, Japan is responsible for driving growth, market development, and commercial execution for Wolters Kluwer Health in Japan. Reporting to the VP Sales, Health International, this role is accountable for achieving bookings, revenue, retention, and strategic growth objectives.

As the senior commercial leader for Japan, the Director will build strong customer relationships, lead a high-performing team, and work across the organization to deliver customer value and business results.

Your first twelve months

Retain the base. Renewing a large existing customer base with no material erosion. Deliver the AI rollout. Meeting our adoption target for AI-enabled capability across existing customers. Grow new business. Delivering new institutional customers against plan.

UpToDate： UpToDate Pro | Clinical Decision Support for Medical Professionals | Wolters Kluwer

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and execute the Japan growth strategy aligned with International segment priorities.
• Deliver bookings, revenue, retention, and pipeline targets.
• Lead strategic customer engagements, enterprise opportunities, and public sector tenders.
• Build executive relationships with healthcare providers, academic institutions, government agencies, and strategic partners.
• Develop and grow channel, distributor, and alliance partnerships.
• Drive sales excellence through effective pipeline management, forecasting, and execution.
• Partner with Marketing, Product, and Customer Success to accelerate adoption, retention, and growth.
• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing commercial team.
• Provide market insights and competitive intelligence to support business strategy.

Qualifications

Required

• Significant sales and commercial leadership experience in technology, information services, or enterprise software.
• Proven track record of delivering sustained revenue growth and exceeding business objectives in Japan.
• Demonstrated success growing revenue within an existing customer base — price realisation, expansion, and renewal negotiation at scale, not solely new logo acquisition.
• Strong leadership, communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience leading and developing a direct sales team, including hiring, coaching and performance management.
• The judgement and self-direction to operate as the senior WK Health leader in-market, within a global matrixed organisation.
• Native or near-native Japanese, and business-level English.
• Bachelor's degree.

Desired

• Advanced business qualification (e.g., MBA).
• Deep understanding of the Japanese healthcare market and procurement environment.
• Experience leading complex enterprise sales cycles and strategic account relationships.
• Experience managing channel, distributor, or alliance partnerships.
• Clinical decision support, healthcare information, digital health, or EHR/EMR experience.

How we will measure success

• Net revenue retention and total revenue against plan.
• Growth in average contract value across the base.
• Clinical usage and engagement across the customer base.
• AI capability adoption among existing customers.
• New business bookings against plan.
• Forecast accuracy and pipeline quality.
• Progress toward a functioning Japan partner ecosystem.
• Team engagement, capability growth and retention.

Our Interview Practices

To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.

Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.