Director, Clinical Development AI Partnerships

Company Description

About Abb Vie

Abb Vie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas including immunology, oncology and neuroscience - and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about Abb Vie, please visit us at  Follow @abbvie on Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, X and You Tube.

Reporting to the Head of Clinical Development AI Partnerships, the Director, Clinical Development AI Partnerships will play a key role in advancing Abb Vie's external innovation agenda for artificial intelligence applied to clinical development. This role will help identify, assess, and progress partnership opportunities from the global AI and life sciences innovation ecosystem, with focus on AI-enabled capabilities that can improve clinical trial design, efficiency, quality, execution, evidence generation, and participant engagement.

This leader will be responsible for independently leading substantive work streams across sourcing, evaluation, diligence, pilot design, benchmark planning, partner engagement, and internal governance recommendations. This person works in close collaboration with Clinical Development leaders, AI Strategy & Partnerships, Search & Evaluation, Business Development & Acquisitions, Business Technology Solutions, Transactions, Legal, Procurement, Privacy, Compliance, and R&D stakeholders. The primary scope is Clinical Development, with opportunities spanning therapeutic areas and transaction types such as pilots, research collaborations, licenses, option structures, and other partnership models.

The successful candidate will bring enough clinical development context to understand the problems Abb Vie is trying to solve, enough AI and technology fluency to assess external capabilities credibly, and enough strategy and deal-process discipline to help the organization make practical, evidence-based decisions. This is a builder role in a new and high-priority area: the person should be comfortable operating with ambiguity, developing trusted internal and external relationships, and converting emerging opportunities into rigorous, well-governed partnership paths.

This Director role will be a hands‑on partner to the Development AI cross‑functional team as well as to the broader Abb Vie AI Partnerships team. This person will be leading AI Strategy and Operations for the Clin Dev organization and serve as a trusted advisor to senior leadership in strategy, functions, and business technology. This role is pivotal in driving our organization towards becoming a leader in the application of AI in pharma, ensuring that AI initiatives align with our overarching business objectives, delivering tangible business value and accelerating our promise to patients.

He or she will help translate Abb Vie’s Clinical Development AI priorities into a focused external innovation pipeline. The core areas of emphasis include clinical trial acceleration, clinical trial innovation, and related AI‑enabled capabilities that can improve the speed, quality, and execution of drug development.

• Deal sourcing:
  Closely monitor the evolving landscape of AI and pharmaceutical innovation as it relates to clinical development. Proactively identify and evaluate potential partnering opportunities from AI startups, technology companies, frontier model labs, clinical technology platforms, digital health companies, academic groups, and life sciences investors.

• Opportunity evaluation and diligence:
  Lead or co‑lead the structured assessment of external…