Director, AI Solutions Engineering Lead

Summary Do you want to make a global impact on patient health? Pfizer's International Commercial division is transforming how we bring our medicines to patients across international markets. Within Business Transformation & Technology, our Data Engineering and AI organization builds and scales AI-powered products for internal commercial clients — solutions that sharpen decision-making, accelerate execution, and free our teams to focus on what matters most: ensuring patients receive the medicines they need. As a Director, AI Solutions Engineering Lead , you will be the senior individual contributor anchoring the technical direction of AI products across our International portfolio — leading not a single product, but several concurrent initiatives at different stages of maturity. Recognized as an engineering expert within and beyond the organization, you will operate at the intersection of technology and product: shaping technical strategy, informing what we build and why, and remaining hands-on where it matters most — architecture decisions, reference implementations, and the hardest technical problems. This is not a people management role: you will lead through expertise, foresight, and influence — directing the technical work of blended internal and contractor teams, mentoring engineers and tech leads through defined growth structures, driving consistent ways of working across initiatives, and carrying financial accountability for engineering resourcing and industrialization.

Responsibilities Own the technical direction of a portfolio of AI initiatives spanning multiple concurrent products at different maturity stages — from POC to MVP to enterprise-grade production — ensuring architectural coherence, component reuse, and consistent engineering quality across teams. Act as the accountable technical decision-maker for the portfolio: arbitrate cross-initiative technical conflicts, shared dependencies, and technical debt priorities; own decision outcomes and answer for them to leadership. Shape the medium-term (12–18 month) technical strategy: drive build-vs-buy assessments, vendor and platform evaluations, and feasibility input into portfolio prioritization — operating at the intersection of technical and product decision-making. Remain hands-on at the highest points of leverage: lead architecture spikes and reference implementations, take on the most complex technical problems, and use pull request review as a mechanism for setting and propagating standards. Set, evolve, and enforce engineering standards and ways of working across the portfolio; drive synchronization and consistency across blended internal and contractor teams beyond direct reporting lines. Safeguard solution quality end to end at portfolio level: testing discipline, release readiness, production reliability, and security and compliance posture, in partnership with information security and platform teams. Exercise foresight and act independently: proactively identify and drive self-initiated technical initiatives such as platform improvements, technical debt reduction programs, and engineering capability investments. Invest in people without managing them: provide structured technical mentorship to engineers and tech leads through defined growth frameworks, design documents, architecture decision records, and continuous learning practices (guilds, labs, demos); raise engineering maturity across the organization. Manage budget and spending for engineering industrialization efforts, including external contractor and vendor resources and tooling; ensure cost-effective architecture and resourcing decisions. Collaborate and influence at senior levels: partner with product owners, data science and engineering teams, leadership stakeholders, and vendor leadership; communicate complex technical concepts persuasively to technical and non-technical audiences. Challenge the status quo: evaluate emerging technologies and approaches (including