Director, Agent Intelligence - HYBRID ROLE

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 216,400 - 324,600; Full time

Job summary

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated is seeking an experienced AI engineering leader to direct the Agent Intelligence function in Knowledge & Grounding. You will design memory, personas, skills, and flagship agents to ground and standardize Vertex AI agents.

The role blends research with production, leading a team to deliver scalable, governable intelligence across enterprise use cases. The Director will shape the platform primitives and execution frameworks, collaborating with executives and

Qualifications

• Over a decade in data engineering, AI/ML, or analytics with recent NLP/agent work.
• Hands-on production AI agents using LangChain or similar tools.
• Experience with Snowflake Cortex AI or Databricks AI in enterprise settings.
• Ability to work across the full AI stack from data prep to deployment.
• Design of memory, personas, tools, and agent governance.
• Proven leadership and clear communication with executives.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate Vertex's agent memory layer for per-user and organizational memory.
• Define and steward the persona system including versioning and workflows.
• Curate atomic tools and higher-order skill compositions with clear contracts.
• Build and deploy flagship AI agents for enterprise use cases.
• Define enterprise standards for agent orchestration and tooling.
• Set UX quality bar for conversations and ensure consistency.
• Govern reusable prompt and skill assets with documentation workflows.

Skills

Leadership & Communication

Production Operations

AI Agent Expertise

Cloud AI Platforms

Memory & State Design

Full-Stack AI Engineering

Proven Experience

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

Snowflake Cortex AI

Databricks AI

Agent Orchestration Frameworks

Job description

Overview

This is a hybrid position requiring 3 days a week in our Boston office. We are seeking an experienced AI engineering leader to build and operate Vertex's Agent Intelligence layer: the memory, personas, skills, and flagship agent experiences that make every Vertex AI agent grounded, consistent, and effective. Vertex Pharmaceuticals is in a transformational period, and the AI team is at the center of our AI-first strategy, delivering solutions that empower executives, researchers, and business users to make faster, more confident decisions. As part of the Vertex Data team, you will lead the Agent Intelligence function within Knowledge & Grounding. You will own the four primitives that all Vertex agents are built from: agent memory (personal and organizational), personas as code, skills (atomic tools and higher-order compositions), and the flagship agents that put those primitives to work on Vertex's hardest use cases. As the Director of Agent Intelligence, you will build the reusable building blocks of agent intelligence at Vertex. Your work will multiply the velocity and quality of agent development across Vertex, ensuring every agent benefits from a common foundation of grounded, governed, and reusable intelligence.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

• Agent Memory. Design and operate Vertex's agent memory layer, spanning personal memory (per-user, per-session continuity) and organizational memory (shared institutional knowledge agents accumulate and reuse), including retention, retrieval, conflict resolution, and classification policies.
• Personas as Code. Define and steward the persona system that gives Vertex agents their voice, remit, and boundaries, including versioning, review, composition, and deployment workflows.
• Skills Catalog & Compositions. Curate the catalog of atomic tools agents can call (retrieval, analytics, action) and the higher-order skill compositions that combine them into persona-specific workflows, with clear contracts, registry, and quality standards.
• Flagship Agent Development. Design, build, and deploy custom AI agents for Vertex's highest-value enterprise use cases using Snowflake Cortex AI, Databricks AI, and agent orchestration frameworks, using these builds to harden the underlying primitives.
• Enterprise Agent Standards. Define and maintain the enterprise standards for agent orchestration, prompt libraries, persona definitions, tool-use patterns, and response quality that all teams must follow, regardless of builder.
• Experience Consistency & UX Standards. Define the quality bar for conversational UX across the enterprise (tone/persona, citation patterns, error handling, escalation paths, transparency) and drive consistency across agents.
• Prompt & Skill Library Stewardship. Curate and govern reusable prompt and skill assets (system prompts, persona templates, tool instructions, conversation patterns) with documentation and contribution workflows.

Knowledge and Skills

• Proven Experience. 10+ years of experience in data engineering, AI/ML, or advanced analytics, with 3+ years specifically focused on NLP systems, AI agent development, or conversational AI.
• AI Agent Expertise. Hands-on experience building production AI agents using frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph, or similar orchestration tools.
• Cloud AI Platforms. Strong experience with Snowflake (Cortex AI, Cortex Analyst, Cortex Search) and/or Databricks (Agent Bricks, AI Functions, Mosaic AI) in enterprise environments.
• Full-Stack AI Engineering. Ability to work across the full AI stack, including data preparation, prompt engineering, agent orchestration, evaluation/testing, deployment, and monitoring.
• Memory & State Design. Direct experience designing how agents remember, including session state, long-horizon memory, retrieval over conversational history, and the data model behind it.
• Production Operations. Track record of operating AI systems in production with high availability, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
• Leadership & Communication. Proven ability to lead technical teams, communicate with executive stakeholders, and translate business needs into AI solutions.

Preferred

• Pharma or Life Sciences Context. Experience in pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences data environments. Familiarity with clinical, regulatory, and commercial data domains is a plus.
• Platform Primitive Design. Experience designing reusable agent abstractions such as persona frameworks, skill registries, or tool catalogs.
• Agent Evaluation Tooling. Familiarity with evaluation tooling such as Braintrust, LangSmith, Mosaic AI Agent Evaluation, Arize, or Ragas.
• Model Customization. Experience with model fine-tuning, distillation, or post-training for domain adaptation.

Pay Range

$216,400 - $324,600

Disclosure Statement

The range provided is based on what we believe is a reasonable estimate for the base salary pay range for this job at the time of posting. This role is eligible for an annual bonus and annual equity awards. Some roles may also be eligible for overtime pay, in accordance with federal and state requirements. Actual base salary pay will be based on a number of factors, including skills, competencies, experience, and other job-related factors permitted by law.

At Vertex, our Total Rewards offerings also include inclusive market-leading benefits to meet our employees wherever they are in their career, financial, family and wellbeing journey while providing flexibility and resources to support their growth and aspirations. From medical, dental and vision benefits to generous paid time off (including a week-long company shutdown in the Summer and the Winter), educational assistance programs including student loan repayment, a generous commuting subsidy, matching charitable donations, 401(k) and so much more.

Flex Designation

Remote-Eligible

Flex Eligibility Status

In this Remote-Eligible role, you can choose to be designated as:

• Remote: work remotely five days per week and come into the office on occasion - you\'re always welcome on-site; or select
• Hybrid: work remotely up to two days per week; or select
• On-Site: work five days per week on-site with ad hoc flexibility.

Note: The Flex status for this position is subject to Vertex's Policy on Flex @ Vertex Program and may be changed at any time.

#LI-Remote

Company Information

Vertex is a global biotechnology company that invests in scientific innovation.

Vertex is committed to equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination for all employees and qualified applicants without regard to a person\'s race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, or any characteristic protected under applicable law. Vertex is an E-Verify Employer in the United States. Vertex will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities, in accordance with applicable law.

Any applicant requiring an accommodation in connection with the hiring process and/or to perform the essential functions of the position for which the applicant has applied should make a request to the recruiter or hiring manager, or contact Talent Acquisition at [e-mail]