Senior Manager AI Engineering

ICON Clinical Research; Dublin; On-site; EUR 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual leave entitlements

Health insurance

Retirement planning

Global Employee Assistance Programme

Life assurance

Flexible country-specific benefits

Job summary

ICON Clinical Research in Dublin, Ireland, is seeking a Senior Manager of AI Engineering and Operations to lead the central AI platform, multi-agent framework, and services. The role focuses on secure, scalable, production-grade solutions enabling data-driven decisions across ICON's global business.

You will mentor a cross-functional team, drive CI/CD, monitoring, and incident management, and partner with stakeholders on roadmaps and tool evaluations.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software engineering with leadership history.
• Experience deploying AI/ML systems to production.
• Familiarity with agentic AI, multi-agent systems or large language models.
• Cloud-native architectures, DevOps/MLOps, platform engineering.
• Ability to manage complex technology programs and engage stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in CS/IT or related field; relevant certifications are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end development and operation of ICON's AI engineering platform and services.
• Drive code quality, CI/CD, automated testing, and deployment governance.
• Establish monitoring, observability, and incident management for production systems.
• Mentor a high-performing, cross-functional engineering team.
• Oversee resource planning across multiple AI programs and timelines.
• Embed security, compliance and responsible AI into engineering outputs.

Skills

Software engineering

AI/ML systems

Cloud-native

DevOps/MLOps

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Microsoft certifications desirable

Tools

Azure

Power Platform

Job description

Senior Manager, AI Engineering and Operations

ICON is a global healthcare intelligence and clinical research organisation united by a mission to bring new medicines and treatments to patients faster.

As a values-driven organisation, integrity, collaboration, agility, and inclusion are at the heart of how we work and interact with each other, customers, patients and suppliers.

Senior Manager, AI Engineering

Dublin, Ireland - hybrid

As a Senior AI Engineering Operations Manager at ICON, you will play a pivotal role in shaping and delivering our Enterprise AI capability. You will lead the engineering operations behind our central AI platform, multi-agent framework, and agent services layer-forming the foundation for AI innovation across the organisation.

This is a high-impact leadership role where you will combine technical expertise with people leadership to ensure our AI solutions are secure, scalable, reliable, and built to production-grade standards, enabling transformative outcomes across our global business.

What You Will Do

In this role, you will be responsible for the end-to-end leadership, delivery, and operational excellence of ICON's AI engineering platform and services.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development, stability, and continuous improvement of the central AI platform, multi-agent framework, and agent services, ensuring high performance and scalability
• Drive engineering excellence through best practices in code quality, CI/CD, automated testing, and deployment governance
• Establish robust monitoring, observability, and incident management processes to maintain production-grade reliability and service availability
• Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing cross-functional engineering team, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning
• Oversee resource planning and delivery across multiple concurrent AI programmes, ensuring alignment with strategic priorities and timelines
• Embed security, compliance, and responsible AI principles into all engineering outputs, ensuring adherence to regulatory and organisational standards
• Act as a key engineering partner to stakeholders, contributing to strategic planning, technology roadmaps, and the evaluation of emerging AI tools and frameworks

Your Profile

To succeed in this role, you will bring a strong blend of technical depth, leadership capability, and a passion for building scalable AI solutions in a fast-evolving environment.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• 8+experience in software engineering with a track record of leading and developing engineering teams.
• Hands-on experience designing, deploying, and operating AI/ML systems in production environments.
• Experience with agentic AI, multi-agent systems, or modern LLM-based frameworks.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures, DevOps/MLOps practices, and platform engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex technology programmes and engage effectively with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Microsoft certifications (e.g. Microsoft 365, Azure, Power Platform, AI) highly desirable.

Why Join ICON?

At ICON, you will be part of a global organisation at the forefront of innovation in healthcare intelligence and clinical research. This role offers the opportunity to shape enterprise-wide AI capabilities, work with cutting-edge technologies, and make a meaningful impact by enabling smarter, data-driven decision-making across the organisation.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where our people can thrive, develop, and make a difference.

What ICON can offer you

Our success depends on the quality of our people. That's why we've made it a priority to build a diverse culture that rewards high performance and nurtures talent.

In addition to your competitive salary, ICON offers a range of additional benefits. Our benefits are designed to be competitive within each country and are focused on well-being and work life balance opportunities for you and your family.

Our benefits examples include:

• Various annual leave entitlements
• A range of health insurance offerings to suit you and your family's needs.
• Competitive retirement planning offerings to maximize savings and plan with confidence for the years ahead.
• Global Employee Assistance Programme, LifeWorks, offering 24-hour access to a global network of over 80,000 independent specialized professionals who are there to support you and your family's well-being.
• Life assurance
• Flexible country-specific optional benefits, including childcare vouchers, bike purchase schemes, discounted gym memberships, subsidized travel passes, health assessments, among others.

At ICON, inclusion & belonging are fundamental to our culture and values. We're dedicated to providing an inclusive and accessible environment for all candidates. ICON is committed to providing a workplace free of discrimination and harassment. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.