Senior Director, Data and AI Engineer

Job Summary

The Senior Director, Data and AI Engineering will be a visionary and strategic leader responsible for defining and executing the data and AI engineering strategy across the entire R&D value chain with a deep knowledge of AI and R&D Data. This role will empower scientific and business functions—including drug development, clinical trials, and real-world data evidence—by delivering robust, scalable, and compliant data and AI foundations and implementing advanced data, AI and Generative AI (Gen AI) solutions.

• Define and drive the strategic vision and roadmap for data engineering, AI, and Gen AI capabilities within R&D, aligning with overall business objectives and scientific priorities.
• Serve as a key thought leader and trusted advisor to senior R&D leadership on opportunities and risks related to AI and data technologies and AI. Represent data and AI engineering in key AI and Data solutions initiatives in Otsuka as needed.
• Evaluate and adopt emerging data and AI technologies, balancing new opportunities with the need for scalability, reliability, and regulatory compliance.

• Deliver leading‑edge engineering approaches, effective enterprise data strategy (specifically clinical, operational, and real‑world data), robust and responsible AI/ML model development, fit‑for‑purpose clinical development data stewardship strategies to enable key data insights to inform decision making and assist in business transformation initiatives.
  • Lead and deliver the design, development, and deployment of extensible and scalable data engineering for complex R&D Data, pipelines, and architecture for AI applications to support all R&D data AI needs, including structured, unstructured (text, imaging, and data from sensors, medical devices, and digital apps), and real‑time data.
  • Oversee the implementation of AI and Gen AI use cases from ideation to production deployment, and application life‑cycle management. Hands‑on experience in architecting engineering foundation for a diverse set of AI solutions.
  • Lead and deliver data processing, representations, and AI engineering in R&D for applications ranging across clinical trial optimization, patient recruitment, content authoring automation, asset management, pharmacovigilance, quality, regulatory, and enterprise functions, Real‑World Data, sensor and medical device data, omics data.
  • Champion engineering best practices, review AI solution architectures, and data & AI observability to ensure technical consistency, scalability, and effective governance of AI engineering across the portfolio of oversight.
  • Architect and scale MLOps practices for in‑house applications to support the entire model lifecycle—from experimentation and deployment to monitoring and retraining—while ensuring automation and reproducibility.
  • Drive awareness of AI/ML applications and the importance of a strong Data and AI engineering foundation across the organization.
  • Provide technical and engineering support for Data and Information Governance, quality, and FAIR data.

• Build, mentor, and lead a high‑performing and collaborative team of data engineers, AI/ML engineers, life‑cycle support.
• Foster a culture of innovation, continuous learning, and accountability within and across the team.
• Effectively manage budget, resource allocation, and project timelines for the data and AI engineering portfolio.

• Ensure that all data and AI initiatives and applications adhere to internal governance standards, data privacy regulations (e.g., GxP, HIPAA), and responsible AI principles.
• Collaborate with Legal and Compliance teams to embed auditability and traceability into AI and Gen AI workflows.
• Serve as AI and Data engineering expert for internal portfolio as well as organization‑wide initiatives, reviews, and AI committees.
• Establish and manage robust monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes for all AI capabilities.
• Effectively manage and provide oversight on vendors and vendor resources providing support to data and AI engineering portfolio.
• Lead or participate in meetings related to Data…