Associate Director, IT Senior Engineer

About the role

We are seeking a hands-on Sr. AI Platform Engineer (Associate Director) to collaborate and drive platform-aligned AI outcomes across the enterprise. The role provides engineering leadership and AI solution architecture oversight for platform and framework deliverables, including reference patterns and guardrails, CI/CD & IaC blueprints, governance-by-design controls, observability, and cost/performance posture. You will operate in a regulated pharmaceutical environment, leading small delivery teams and collaborating with Data Science, Cloud/Infrastructure, and IT to guide use cases onto secure, reliable, compliant production pathways while building reusable components and agentic enablement patterns adopted across domains.

Responsibilities

• Design and engineer reusable Agentic AI components and multi-agent workflows for planning, reasoning, memory, and tool orchestration using LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, and Semantic Kernel.
• Apply emerging AI interaction standards including Model Context Protocol (MCP) and A2A (Agent-to-Agent) communication to support scalable multi-agent systems.
• Lead small platform/partner teams to deliver framework components: CI/CD blueprints, IaC modules, prompt/model versioning, evaluation harnesses, policy-as-code, observability dashboards (telemetry/drift/safety), and incident runbooks.
• Drive enablement of the Agentic AI C4E by creating practitioner knowledge articles, supporting and leading office hours, and engaging in project scoping, architecture reviews, and governance alignment.
• Contribute to and operationalize enterprise AI reference architectures, standards, and guardrails to align teams on consistent patterns and quality.
• Implement evaluation frameworks for LLMs, prompts, safety/guardrails, hallucination risk, and performance metrics; de-emphasize RAG where not required.
• Enhance internal AI frameworks, orchestration templates, and reusable components to improve scalability and delivery consistency.
• Collaborate with Platform Engineering to align deployments with enterprise CI/CD, observability, governance, and operational standards; advance reliability for AI workloads (SLOs, telemetry, incident prevention) with SRE/SecOps.
• Ensure solutions follow Responsible AI practices, security requirements, privacy-by-design, and pharma regulatory controls (GxP, 21 CFR Part 11); embed security-by-design and policy enforcement with documentation and traceability.
• Influence technical priorities, sequencing, and trade-offs across partner teams; provide inputs to vendor selection and adoption decisions where relevant.
• Guide solution teams onto approved platform pathways (Dataiku automation, Azure/AWS AI services, Snowflake Cortex), ensuring scalability, reliability (SLOs), security, and governed delivery in a regulated setting.
• Influence priorities and sequencing, unblock delivery risks, and communicate progress, risks, and value to senior stakeholders.

Requirements

• 10–12+ years of hands-on experience in AI/ML Platform Engineering, LLMOps/MLOps, DevOps with a proven track record of building and deploying production-grade AI systems.
• Depth with cloud AI platform services on Azure (OpenAI, Azure AI/ML, Cognitive Search) and AWS (Bedrock, AgentCore, Comprehend, SageMaker), with sound build-vs-buy judgment.
• Strong Python engineering skills and proficiency with FastAPI or Flask for building AI-powered services.
• Hands-on experience with Dataiku for workflow orchestration, automation scenarios, model integration, or plugin-based extensions.
• Deep familiarity with Agentic AI frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, Semantic Kernel) and demonstrated experience building multi-agent workflows, autonomous task orchestration, and tool-enabled agent systems. (RAG familiarity is valued but not the primary emphasis.)
• Experience with prompt engineering and iterative prompt refinement for internal LLM use cases.
• Working knowledge of containerization (Docker), CI/CD tooling, and vector database integrations (e.g., OpenSearch, Pinecone).
• Strong collaboration skills and the ability to work closely with data scientists, engineers, security/compliance partners, and business stakeholders in a regulated environment.
• Effective communication, technical storytelling, and problem-solving skills; ability to influence technical direction across teams.
• Self-motivated, hands-on, and results-oriented, with continuous learning in GenAI, Agentic AI, and modern orchestration patterns.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Preferred Certifications (nice to have):
  • Cloud/GenAI: AWS or Azure AI / AWS or Azure Developer / AWS Solutions Architect; AWS Bedrock or Generative AI, Machine Learning Specialty.
  • Agentic/AI Tooling: LangChain / Semantic Kernel badges or equivalent micro-credentials.

Competencies

• Accountability for Results: Stay focused on key strategic objectives, be accountable for high standards of performance, and take an active role in leading change.
• Strategic Thinking & Problem Solving: Make decisions considering the long-term impact to customers, patients, employees, and the business.
• Patient & Customer Centricity: Maintain an ongoing focus on the needs of our customers and/or key stakeholders.
• Impactful Communication: Communicate with logic, clarity, and respect. Influence at all levels to achieve the best results.
• Respectful Collaboration: Seek and value others’ perspectives and strive for diverse partnerships to enhance work toward common goals.
• Empowered Development: Play an active role in professional development as a business imperative.

Pay

Minimum $169,222.00 - Maximum $253,000.00, plus incentive opportunity. The range shown represents a typical pay range or starting pay for individuals hired in the role to perform in the United States. Other elements may be used to determine actual pay, such as the candidate’s job experience, specific skills, and comparison to internal incumbents currently in the role. Typically, actual pay will be positioned within the established range, rather than at its minimum or maximum.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and prescription drug coverage.
• Company-provided basic life, accidental death & dismemberment, short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• Tuition reimbursement and student loan assistance.
• Generous 401(k) match.
• Flexible time off, paid holidays, and paid leave programs.
• Additional company-provided benefits.