Associate Director, AI Development Lead

About the role

Jazz Pharmaceuticals is a global biopharma company dedicated to transforming the lives of patients and their families through innovative medicines. The Associate Director, AI Development Lead role is a strategic technical leader responsible for advancing the company's enterprise AI capability and driving measurable business value through AI and machine learning.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship end-to-end ML solutions — data ingestion, feature engineering, model training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring — across supervised, unsupervised, and other classical/statistical learning paradigms.
• Design and ship end-to-end GenAI solutions — including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, agentic workflows, vector stores, and integrations with foundation model APIs.
• Write production-quality code (Python or related languages/frameworks as needed), with attention to readability, modularity, scalability, performance, and maintainability.
• Debug, profile, and optimize solutions — including cost, latency, accuracy, and reliability trade-offs.
• Support deployment and post-deployment operations, including CI/CD, observability, model monitoring, drift detection, and incident response.
• Establish and continuously refine technical standards for development: reference architectures, design patterns, coding conventions, evaluation methodologies, and reusable components.
• Lead a small team of AI developers across traditional ML and Generative AI, setting clear technical direction, priorities, and quality expectations.
• Be accountable for the quality and outcomes of the team's work: solution design, code and model quality, documentation, and delivery.
• Mentor team members through code & design review, both informal and formal feedback; build technical depth and ownership across the team.
• Plan and sequence delivery work in partnership with stakeholders, balancing scope, technical risk, and timelines.
• Evaluate AI use cases and proposed solutions for technical feasibility, data readiness, value, and risk.
• Use expertise to support business in prioritizing AI initiatives based on business impact, technical feasibility, bandwidth constraints, solution complexity, and scalability.
• Decide resource allocation and development activities for the team.
• Vet AI vendors and platforms in collaboration with our Enterprise AI Architect, as well as Infrastructure and Digital Security teams.
• Contribute to the maturation of the AI capability through reference architectures, MLOps practices, evaluation frameworks, and reusable components that make future delivery faster and more reliable.
• Help define and apply Responsible AI practices — explainability, evaluation, privacy, security, and risk management — across the work the team delivers and supports.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, InfoSec, and Compliance to ensure AI solutions meet enterprise standards.

Requirements

Demonstrated ability to lead, mentor, and be accountable for the technical work of others. Demonstrated experience leading offshore or near shore development teams required. Hands-on technical depth in building and shipping ML/GenAI solutions to production. Proficiency in writing production-quality code and designing AI/ML architecture. Strong understanding of core machine learning algorithms and statistical modeling techniques, model evaluation, and real-world deployment considerations. Proficiency in one or more programming languages (e.g. Python, R) and ML frameworks (such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn). Strong understanding of modern Generative AI concepts and approaches: LLMs, RAG, fine-tuning, agentic patterns, evaluation, and guardrails. Significant hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure); AWS or GCP preferred. Familiarity with AI governance and risk frameworks. Excellent communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts in clear, non-technical terms, and a demonstrated ability to influence and guide stakeholders across various levels of an organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a quantitative or technical field required. Advanced degree or equivalent preferred.
• 5–7 years of relevant experience in AI, machine learning, or data science required, 10+ years preferred.
• Experience in pharmaceutical, life sciences, or another regulated industry strongly preferred.
• Experience evaluating and integrating third-party AI/ML solutions and vendor platforms strongly preferred.

Skills

• Leadership and mentoring skills.
• Technical proficiency in AI/ML and GenAI.
• Strong communication and influencing skills.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Familiarity with AI governance and risk frameworks.

Benefits

The full and complete base pay range is: $153,600.00 - $230,400.00. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors, including qualifications, skills, relevant experience, job knowledge, and other pertinent factors. The goal is to ensure fair and competitive compensation aligned with the candidate's expertise and contributions, within the established pay framework and our Total Compensation philosophy. Internal equity considerations will also influence individual base pay decisions. This range will be reviewed on a regular basis.

For more information on our Benefits offerings, please click here: https://careers.jazzpharma.com/benefits.html.