Associate Director of AI Delivery Management

Job Description

Job Description:

The Associate Director of AI Delivery Management is a senior E2E Delivery Lead in the APEX E2E Delivery Management team, based in Rahway, New Jersey. You will be the single accountable owner of complex AI engagements, or a set of related engagements, from intake through production, hand-over to the run team and customer feedback.

You will establish and lead the build team for each engagement and be accountable for its successful delivery. The role calls for deep experience across the SDLC and in end-to-end orchestration of technology programs, the technical depth to challenge architecture and delivery choices on AI solutions, financial management of engagement budgets and business cases, and the presence to partner with director- and executive-level customers.

Key Responsibilities:

Hands-on Delivery Execution Management

• Serve as the E2E Delivery Lead for complex engagements, such as those with several build teams or vendors, enterprise system integrations, or validated (GxP) or high-risk AI solutions, owning scope, plan, budget, business value and the customer relationship.

• Build the team for each engagement from Mosaic (process intelligence, business analysis and UX), the Build shop (engineering, solution architecture and data science) and teams outside APEX, and lead it day to day in a matrix.

• Run engagements through the delivery playbook stages and exit checks, demonstrate working software every two to three weeks, and set and hold an input cutoff for each release.

• Plan go-live and hand-over, covering deployment, cutover, support model, training and acceptance by the IT owner and run team.

• Validate results with the customer before release, weigh release risk openly, and make the call to escalate or delay when a release is not ready.

Technical and SDLC Oversight

• Govern the full SDLC for your engagements, including requirements, design reviews, build, testing, release, deployment and the validation deliverables required for regulated solutions.

• Bring the technical depth to challenge architecture, integration, data, security and non-functional choices on AI solutions, such as agents, retrieval-augmented generation, machine learning models and cloud services, and to explain trade-offs to executives.

• Drive reuse of existing products, agents and components, and apply APEX frameworks and standards for quality, security, privacy and responsible AI.

Engagement & Client Partnership

• Act as the face of AI for your customers, building trusted relationships at director and executive level and taking accountability for their satisfaction.

• Lead discovery and design thinking when customers need help defining the problem, and connect business needs to technical execution through clear documentation and design blueprints.

• Apply AI frameworks to identify automation, optimization and augmentation opportunities, and feed new opportunities into the APEX pipeline.

Portfolio, Governance & Financials

• Own engagement budgets, forecasts and business cases, and track the value realized after hand-over.

• Support APEX demand management with triage, sizing and valuation of incoming requests, and recommend priorities and trade-offs when demand exceeds capacity.

• Provide transparent reporting through a weekly Jira update for the APEX leadership team, and keep stage-gate decisions timely.

Leadership & Coaching

• Lead multidisciplinary teams of employees and contractors across our tech centers, and manage vendor delivery where it applies.

• Coach and mentor Specialist and Senior Specialist E2E Delivery Leads, and share lessons learned and reusable practices across the team.

• Foster a culture of servant leadership, psychological safety, inclusion and continuous learning.

Decision Rights and Support:

• You decide the delivery approach, plan, team requests and release recommendation for your engagements, within the scope agreed with the customer.

• You agree scope and priority changes with the business sponsor and product owner, and technical design choices with the Build shop's solution architects.

• You escalate capacity conflicts and cross-team blockers to APEX demand management and the APEX leadership team, and you are an escalation point for other E2E Delivery Leads.

• Where the customer leads the business side, you remain accountable for the delivery plan, risks, readiness and hand-over, and record who does what in the engagement charter.

• You lead the work without doing every job: Mosaic provides business analysis, process intelligence and UX, and the Build shop provides engineering, solution architecture and data science.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems or a related field required; advanced degree preferred (MBA, MS in AI/ML, Computer Science or a related field).

Required Experience and Skills:

• Minimum 10 years of progressive experience in software development and delivery, in roles such as technical project or program manager, engineering lead, solution architect, developer or test lead.

• At least 5 years leading end-to-end delivery of software, data or AI projects and programs into production, including hand-over to operations.

• Recent track record (3+ years) of delivering AI, machine learning, generative AI or intelligent automation solutions with measurable business impact.

• Deep knowledge of the SDLC, agile delivery, release management and IT service transition, and strong familiarity with agile, product and portfolio management practices and tools.

• Experience managing budgets, forecasts and business cases for technology investments.

• Experience leading multidisciplinary, geographically distributed teams, including contractors and vendors, in a matrix organization.

• Strong relationship-building, influencing and facilitation skills with senior business and IT leaders.

• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex AI concepts into plain language and produce clear written artifacts.

Preferred Experience:

• Delivery of validated (GxP) systems in pharmaceutical, life sciences or another regulated industry.

• Project, program or agile certification (for example PMP, PgMP, PMI-ACP or SAFe).

• Product management experience, including roadmaps, adoption and value measurement.

• Hands-on use of Jira and Confluence, and of cloud AI platforms such as AWS or Azure.

What You Will Need to Demonstrate:

Internal and external candidates should be ready to give concrete examples of:

• A complex program with several teams or vendors that you led from scope to production and hand-over, and the outcome it delivered.

• A time you challenged an architecture, estimate or release decision and changed the outcome.

• How you handled competing priorities or a capacity conflict, and how the decision was made.

Success Measures:

• Engagements delivered to agreed milestones, released to production and accepted by the run team.

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) and stakeholder trust on the engagements you lead.

• Value realized against business cases.

• Faster throughput from intake to delivery, with risks and confidence reported early and accurately.

• Growth of the Specialist and Senior Specialist leads you coach.

Location & Travel:

• Hybrid out of Rahway, New Jersey, working with customers and teams across US and European time zones. Occasional travel.

Required Skills: Agile Methodology, AI Implementation Planning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Budget Management, Critical Thinking, Life Cycle Planning, Portfolio Management, Program Management, Risk Management, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Stakeholder Management, Vendor Management.

Preferred Skills: Computer System Validation (CSV), Data Engineering, Generative AI, Machine Learning, Product Management.

Required Skills:

AI Implementation Planning, AI Implementation Planning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Atlassian JIRA, Automation, Blueprints, Computer Science, Computer System Validation (CSV), Customer Satisfaction Management, Data Engineering, Data Visualization, Delivery Management, Demand Management, Design Applications, Design Thinking, Influencing Skills, Information Systems, Portfolio Management, Product Management, Regulatory Strategies, Servant Leadership, Software Configurations, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Solution Architecture {+ 2 more}

Preferred Skills:

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The primary location for this posting is:

USA - New Jersey - Rahway

Where required by law, the compensation range for this role is provided below.

The salary range for the primary location of this role is:

$142,400.00 - $224,100.00

This range reflects the Company's reasonable expectation of the base salary applicable to this role at the time of posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs. The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at .

Additional location(s): Please note the salary range above applies to the Primary Location of the position. Where a role has other listed locations, different compensation guidelines may apply. You may find the salary ranges for additional locations below. If the salary range is not listed for the location you are applying to, our Talent Acquisition team will provide further information to you relevant to your location.

Additional location(s) Compensation Information:

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

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Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

VISA Sponsorship:

Travel Requirements:

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

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Hazardous Material(s):

Job Posting End Date:

11/27/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.