Associate Director AI Activation

MSD • Rahway, NJ

3d • $156,900 - $247,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

The Associate Director, AI Activation & Data Science is a member of the AI Activation team within Digital Human Health (DHH), supporting the Specialty, Pharma & Infectious Diseases business units. This highly technical AI leadership role applies hands-on expertise in building and deploying AI solutions—including generative AI, large language models (LLMs), and agentic systems—to pharmaceutical commercial challenges. In partnership with brand, marketing, Market Engagement (ME), and commercial analytics colleagues, the role ensures that solutions address real business needs.

The Associate Director leads the technical design and delivery of strategic AI programs, defines scalable architectures and guardrails, and advances AI use cases from prototype to production with measurable business value. The role also upholds responsible AI, compliance, and governance standards while enabling adoption and building technical AI capabilities across the business.

Requirements

• At least 5 years of experience in AI/ML engineering, applied data science, or a related technical field, including at least 2 years of hands-on experience building generative AI or LLM-based solutions.
• Prior pharmaceutical or healthcare industry experience.
• Deep expertise in LLMs and generative AI, including RAG, embeddings and vector databases, agent frameworks, prompt engineering, and fine-tuning.
• Proven experience taking AI solutions from prototype to production at enterprise scale, including solution architecture, APIs, cloud services for building AI and agents, and MLOps/LLMOps.
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks and guardrails for AI systems grounded in responsible AI principles and governance.
• Advanced Python and SQL skills; experience with Databricks or similar platforms; strong software engineering practices such as Git, testing, and CI/CD; and a solid foundation in machine learning and statistics.
• Ability to explain complex AI concepts in plain business language to non-technical stakeholders and senior leaders, with a product mindset focused on user needs, adoption, and measurable business value.
• People and/or matrix leadership experience, including leading cross-functional teams, global collaborators, and external delivery partners and vendors.
• Strong organizational and project management skills, with resilience and adaptability in ambiguity and a fast-moving AI landscape.
• Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related technical discipline.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical design and end-to-end delivery of DHH-wide strategic AI initiatives from ideation and prototyping through deployment and adoption.
• Design and build generative AI and agentic solutions, including LLM applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), multi-agent workflows, tool and API integrations, and simulation or scenario-planning capabilities.
• Define scalable AI architectures, reusable components, and delivery guardrails to operationalize and democratize AI use cases across ME teams.
• Establish evaluation approaches covering accuracy, groundedness, reliability, latency, cost, and safety, and monitor AI performance in production.
• Lead MLOps/LLMOps practices, including versioning, CI/CD, monitoring, and model lifecycle management, in partnership with IT and platform teams.
• Stay current with AI models, frameworks, and tools and assess which internal and external capabilities should be adopted.
• Run targeted AI pilots in prioritized business-impact areas, rapidly prototyping and validating value with business partners.
• Partner with brand, ME, and commercial analytics teams to understand business needs and translate them into technical requirements and solution designs.
• Activate and guide external delivery partners and vendors, set technical standards, and review solution quality.
• Use a structured prioritization approach to triage AI requests and guide teams toward approved enterprise AI tools and platforms.
• Champion responsible AI practices and ensure solutions meet data privacy, security, model validation, and enterprise governance standards.
• Mentor team members and build technical AI capability across the business, establishing best practices for prompt engineering, agent design, and AI development.
• Align brand, ME, IT, and cross-functional stakeholders on priorities, manage scope, and redirect out-of-scope requests while maintaining strong relationships.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision healthcare, and other insurance benefits for employees and families.
• Retirement benefits, including 401(k).
• Paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days.
• Annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director