Senior Director, AI and Analytics

Overview

We are seeking a Senior Director, AI and Analytics with a passion for architecting solutions, building systems, and delivering real business impact through hands-on contribution. As Senior Director, you will own the enterprise AI capability, leading a small, high-caliber team while staying actively engaged in solving our most complex technical challenges. This role blends strategic leadership with meaningful hands-on work, with approximately 10–20% of your time dedicated to building, reviewing, and advancing production-grade AI/ML systems.This is a role for a deeply technical leader who enjoys staying close to the work. You’ll thrive here if you’re excited to design and deploy modern ML solutions, collaborate closely with engineers, and regularly engage with Python and frameworks like PyTorch as part of your day-to-day leadership.

What You'll Do 

AI Strategy & Technical Leadership 

• Define and execute enterprise AI strategy across R&D, clinical, manufacturing, and commercial 

• Architect end-to-end AI/ML solutions from ideation through production 

• Establish technical standards and governance for regulated environments 

• Lead evaluation of emerging AI technologies (LLMs, generative AI, foundation models) 

Hands-On Engineering 

• Architect and implement production ML systems using modern MLOps practices 

• Write production Python code for ML pipelines, model training, and inference 

• Build/deploy models using PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn on AWS SageMaker or Databricks ML 

• Own the MLOps stack and tackle complex technical challenges directly 

Team Leadership 

• Build and mentor 1-3 highly skilled AI engineers 

• Foster experimentation, scientific rigor, and continuous learning 

• Recruit world-class talent; lead from the front on hardest problems 

Business Partnership 

• Partner with R&D, Clinical Ops, Manufacturing, and Commercial to translate challenges into AI solutions 

• Communicate AI concepts and trade-offs to executive stakeholders 

• Drive adoption and measurable ROI across the organization 

AI Education & Community 

• Lead AI education initiatives across the organization—democratizing AI knowledge at all levels 

• Regularly explore and demo new AI capabilities and technologies to keep the broader community engaged and skills sharp 

• Foster a culture of AI literacy and experimentation enterprise-wide 

Strategic Vendor Partnerships 

• Build and maintain direct relationships with key AI platform partners including Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and other leading vendors 

• Leverage vendor partnerships for early access to capabilities, technical support, and strategic roadmap alignment 

• Serve as primary technical liaison for AI vendor engagements and evaluations 

Requirements 

• 10+ years building production AI/ML systems; 5+ years in leadership 

• Deep ML expertise: supervised/unsupervised learning, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, time series, causal inference 

• Expert Python with PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, XGBoost 

• MLOps experience: MLflow, Kubeflow, SageMaker, Databricks ML 

• Strong software engineering: Git, CI/CD, Docker/Kubernetes, API development 

• LLM/generative AI experience (GPT, Claude, Llama) 

• Modern data platforms: Snowflake, Databricks, Airflow, dbt, Spark 

• AWS expertise preferred 

Business & Leadership (Required) 

• 5+ years in biotech, pharma, or data-intensive industry applying AI at scale 

• AI domain knowledge in at least one area: drug discovery, clinical trials, manufacturing optimization, or commercial analytics 

• Experience in regulated environments 

• 5+ years leading AI/ML teams with hands-on technical mentorship 

• Track record translating business problems into ML solutions with measurable impact 

• Matrix organization experience; comfortable with influence over authority 

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