Senior Director, Applied AI, Design & Innovation

About the Role Senior Director, Applied AI, Design & Innovation leads the cross-functional Design & Innovation team within Global Development - Clinical Operations to shape and deliver AI-enabled capabilities across Clinical Operations and Development. The role drives the enterprise Applied AI strategy, governance, and execution to improve trial design, forecasting, site feasibility, and patient-centric outcomes across Virology, Oncology, and Inflammation. This leader collaborates with Clinical Operations, Clinical Development, Regulatory, Medical Affairs, Commercial, and IT to translate complex needs into scalable AI solutions. What You'll Do

• Define and own the multi-year Applied AI roadmap for Clinical Development & Operations, aligned to enterprise AI strategy.
• Build, scale, and lead a center-of-excellence team spanning data science, ML engineering, GenAI product development, and AI delivery management.
• Establish governance, prioritization frameworks, KPIs, and ROI models that quantify AI's impact at the trial, program, and portfolio level.
• Serve as the executive voice of Applied AI to Senior Leadership, R&D governance forums, and external partners.
• Lead development of predictive enrollment models to improve forecasting accuracy at country, site, and study level; build real-time enrollment performance monitoring capabilities; integrate outputs into operational planning, resource demand, and budget cycles.
• Drive AI/ML-enabled approaches to protocol design optimization, including eligibility criteria simulation, endpoint selection, and protocol complexity scoring; develop site selection and feasibility models leveraging internal data, external RWD/RWE, and historical performance signals.
• Partner with Biostatistics and Clinical Development teams to embed AI insights into protocol authoring, design tollgates, and study start-up decisions.
• Establish, refine, and drive a multi-year AI Innovation strategy aligned to Development and Clinical Operations priorities, operating model evolution, and enterprise AI direction.
• Lead functional deliverables across Design & Innovation, design delivery, early and late-stage innovation capability development by providing overall operational excellence.
• Lead the Clinical Intelligence team to support a variety of strategic queries and operational benchmarking for the executive Clinical Operations and Development leadership teams.
• Shape and manage a portfolio of innovation and AI initiatives aligned to Clinical Operations, translating needs into coherent, scalable AI strategies across Clinical Operations, Clinical Development, Clinical Data Science, Regulatory, Medical Affairs, Commercial, and IT.