Associate Director/Director , AI & Engineering

Syneos Health, Inc.; India; On-site; INR 3,000,000 - 7,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Syneos Health, Inc. seeks an Associate Director/Director of AI & Engineering to lead engineering execution for a complex platform, shaping multi-quarter roadmaps and priorities.

You will collaborate with product, architecture, security, and data teams to deliver measurable customer outcomes and scalable AI-enabled solutions. The role requires 12+ years of leadership in software engineering, deep cloud breadth, and a track record of guiding large teams through the full product lifecycle.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering and technology leadership.
• Proven ownership of complex enterprise products or platforms.
• Experience leading multiple teams and influencing stakeholders.
• Strong breadth across architecture, cloud, APIs, and security.

Responsibilities

• Owns engineering execution for a complex product or platform with multiple teams.
• Translates strategy into multi-quarter engineering roadmap and priorities.
• Leads cross-team planning, governance, and release coordination.
• Establishes engineering standards for CI/CD, testing, and observability.
• Builds reusable AI patterns and platform capabilities through automation.

Skills

AI/ML leadership

Cloud architectures

Distributed systems

Stakeholder management

Team leadership

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

Associate Director/Director , AI & Engineering

Syneos Health® is a leading fully integrated biopharmaceutical solutions organization built to accelerate customer success. We translate unique clinical, medical affairs and commercial insights into outcomes to address modern market realities. Every day we perform better because of how we work together, as one team, each the best at what we do. We bring a wide range of talented experts together across a wide range of business-critical services that support our business. Every role within Corporate is vital to furthering our vision of Shortening the Distance from Lab to Life®.

Discover what our 29,000 employees, across 110 countries already know.

WORK HERE MATTERS EVERYWHERE

Why Syneos Health

We are passionate about developing our people, through career development and progression; supportive and engaged line management; technical and therapeutic area training; peer recognition and total rewards program. We are committed to our Total Self culture - where you can authentically be yourself. Our Total Self culture is what unites us globally, and we are dedicated to taking care of our people. We are continuously building the company we all want to work for and our customers want to work with. Why? Because when we bring together diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives - we're able to create a place where everyone feels like they belong.

Job Responsibilities

• Owns engineering execution for a complex product or platform, a related portfolio, or multiple teams across discovery, planning, design, build, test, release, adoption, production operations, and continuous improvement
• Translates product and business strategy into a multi-quarter engineering roadmap, investment priorities, staffing plan, modernization agenda, and measurable outcome framework
• Partners with Product Management, business stakeholders, Architecture, Quality Engineering, Data, Security, Compliance, and Operations to convert priorities into measurable customer and business outcomes
• Leads cross-team planning, dependency management, architecture governance, risk and cost decisions, release coordination, and transparent executive-level delivery communication
• Establishes and governs engineering standards for architecture and design reviews, secure coding, code review, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, performance, reliability, accessibility, documentation, and production readiness
• Uses business, product, flow, quality, reliability, cost, and talent metrics to improve predictability, deployment health, service resilience, developer experience, and business value
• Builds reusable engineering and AI patterns across products, reduces duplicated solutions, and creates durable platform capabilities through automation-first, API-first, cloud-native, and disciplined technical-debt practices
• Creates an AI-first culture that applies approved AI capabilities responsibly across the product development lifecycle, with human oversight, evaluation, traceability, privacy, security, intellectual-property protection, cost awareness, and measurable outcomes
• Leads managers, technical leaders, senior engineers, partners, and vendors; establishes decision rights, operating rhythms, performance expectations, capability plans, and succession depth across teams

QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically 12+ years of progressive software engineering and technology leadership experience, including substantial people-management responsibility
• Proven ownership of a complex enterprise product or platform, related product portfolio, or multi-team delivery environment through the full product development lifecycle
• Demonstrated experience leading multiple teams and/or managers, shaping engineering strategy, managing cross-functional dependencies, and influencing senior stakeholders
• Strong technology breadth across architecture, cloud, APIs, distributed systems, data, DevSecOps, quality engineering, observability, reliability, security, and operational governance
• Track record of using business, product, delivery, quality, reliability, cost, and talent metrics to guide decisions and improve outcomes
• Practical leadership experience with AI/ML, Generative AI, Applied AI, RAG, AI agents, agentic workflows, LLMOps/ MLOps , AI evaluation, responsible AI governance, or AI-assisted engineering practices is preferred

Get to know Syneos Health

Over the past 5 years, we have worked with 94% of all Novel FDA Approved Drugs, 95% of EMA Authorized Products and over 200 Studies across 73,000 Sites and 675,000+ Trial patients.

No matter what your role i