Director, AI Engineering

PCI Pharma Services; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

PCI Pharma Services seeks a senior AI engineering leader to drive architectural direction and execution of enterprise AI initiatives. You will partner with stakeholders to define architectures, standards, and best practices that scale securely across PCI’s global platforms.

You will oversee end-to-end AI solution delivery, establish patterns for generative AI and RAG, and lead MLOps/LLMOps, governance, and cost optimization in a regulated life sciences context.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science, AI, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of progressive software/AI engineering experience with enterprise initiatives.
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing technical teams or engineering functions.
• Senior technical authority for AI initiatives including governance and vendor oversight.

Responsibilities

• Provide architectural direction and implementation guidance for enterprise AI initiatives.
• Define AI engineering standards, reference architectures, and best practices.
• Lead AI solution design, development, and operationalization across enterprise platforms.
• Establish patterns for generative AI, RAG, agentic workflows, and AI-enabled automation.
• Oversee AI integration across digital products and data platforms.
• Drive lifecycle management, monitoring, observability, and continuous improvement.

Skills

AI architecture

Leadership

Enterprise AI

Cloud-native

MLOps

LLMOps

AI governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/Data Science/AI

Tools

Azure AI Services

Azure OpenAI

AWS AI Services

Google Gemini

Kubernetes

Job description

Life changing therapies. Global impact. Bridge to thousands of biopharma companies and their patients.

We are PCI.

Our investment is in People who make an impact, drive progress and create a better tomorrow. Our strategy includes building teams across our global network to pioneer and shape the future of PCI.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Serve as PCI's senior technical leader for AI engineering, providing architectural direction, technical oversight, and implementation guidance for enterprise AI initiatives.
• Partner with business and technology stakeholders to evaluate AI opportunities and determine appropriate technical approaches, architectures, and implementation strategies.
• Define and maintain AI engineering standards, reference architectures, design patterns, and best practices that support scalable, secure, and supportable solutions.
• Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and operationalization of AI solutions across customer-facing and internal business use cases.
• Establish solution patterns for generative AI, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), agentic workflows, intelligent assistants, and AI-enabled automation.
• Design and oversee AI integrations across enterprise platforms, business applications, digital products, and the Enterprise Data Platform.
• Drive technical decision-making throughout the AI solution lifecycle from ideation through production deployment and ongoing optimization.
• Establish and maintain AI engineering, operational, MLOps, and LLMOps practices across development, testing, validation, and production environments.
• Implement processes for model lifecycle management, monitoring, observability, testing, version control, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure AI solutions are engineered for scalability, reliability, maintainability, supportability, and operational readiness.
• Partner with Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Quality, and Data Engineering teams to implement technical controls supporting PCI's AI governance framework.
• Partner with Legal, Procurement, Cybersecurity, Quality, and business stakeholders to assess the technical feasibility, operational impact, and implementation requirements of AI-related contractual commitments, security controls, data protection requirements, and regulatory obligations.
• Support AI risk assessments, validation activities, audit readiness efforts, and governance reviews as required.
• Ensure AI solutions align with regulatory requirements, security standards, privacy requirements, responsible AI principles, and applicable quality processes.
• Monitor, forecast, and optimize AI-related platform, licensing, model consumption, infrastructure, and operational costs.
• Establish metrics and reporting related to AI adoption, operational effectiveness, solution performance, cost optimization, and business value realization.
• Serve as the primary technical lead for AI-related vendors, consultants, contractors, and implementation partners.
• Direct and oversee AI solution delivery performed by external development teams and strategic technology partners.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies, products, platforms, models, service providers, and industry practices to support technical decision-making and innovation.
• Ensure partner-delivered solutions align with PCI architecture standards, quality expectations, delivery commitments, and business objectives.
• Build and mature PCI's AI engineering capability, including future team development, mentoring, knowledge sharing, and engineering excellence.
• Foster a culture of innovation, responsible experimentation, continuous improvement, and technical learning across the AI engineering function.
• Completes all job duties in compliance with company policies, SOPs, safety rules, and all applicable federal, state, local, quality, and regulatory requirements, including OSHA, FDA, and cGMP standards.
• This position may require overtime and/or weekend work.
• Knowledge of and adherence to all PCI, cGMP, and GCP policies, procedures, rules.
• Attendance of work is an essential function of this position.
• Performs other duties as assigned by Manager/Supervisor.

Special Demands

• Stationary Position: From 1/4 to 1/2 of the day.
• Move, Traverse: From 1/4 to 1/2 of the day.
• Operate, activate, use, prepare, inspect, or place: None
• Install, place, adjust, apply, measure, use, or signal: None.
• Ascend/Descend or Work Atop: None.
• Position self (to) or Move (about or to): None.
• Communicate or exchange information: 3/4 of the day and up.
• Detect, distinguish, or determine: None.

On an average day, the individual can expect to move and/or transport up to 10 pounds

less than 1/4 of the day.

This position may have the following special vision requirements.

• Close Vision Distance Vision Color Vision Peripheral Vision Depth Perception
• Ability to focus No Special Vision Requirements

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Work is primarily performed at a desk and/or in an office environment. for 1/4 to 1/2 of the day.
• The noise level in the work environment is typically, quiet.

Qualifications

The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required for the stated position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, platform engineering, AI engineering, data engineering, or related technology disciplines, including experience leading complex enterprise technology initiatives.
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing technical teams, projects, vendor-delivered solutions, or engineering functions.
• Demonstrated experience serving as a senior technical authority for AI initiatives, including evaluation of AI use cases, selection of technical approaches, architectural decision-making, technical governance, vendor oversight, and operationalization of AI solutions.
• Experience with Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), agentic AI systems, enterprise AI platforms, and modern AI solution architectures.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native architectures, APIs, integration patterns, and the design of scalable, secure, and supportable enterprise solutions.
• Experience establishing and supporting operational practices for AI solutions, including lifecycle management, monitoring, governance, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Strong understanding of cybersecurity, privacy, compliance, responsible AI principles, and implementation of technical controls within regulated or governance-driven environments.
• Experience working with external vendors, consulting partners, contractors, managed service providers, and offshore delivery teams to deliver technology solutions and business outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to evaluate emerging technologies, communicate effectively with technical and business stakeholders, and translate strategic opportunities into scalable technical solutions.

Preferred

• Master’s degree in computer science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with Microsoft Azure AI Services, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, AWS AI Services, Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, or similar enterprise AI platforms.
• Experience establishing MLOps, LLMOps, AI observability, model monitoring, and AI governance capabilities within enterprise environments.
• Experience designing and deploying AI-enabled digital products, enterprise knowledge management solutions, intelligent automation, agentic workflows, and AI-driven business process transformation initiatives.
• Pharmaceutical, life sciences, healthcare, manufacturing, or other highly regulated industry experience, including support for validation, audit readiness, quality systems, or regulatory compliance requirements.

Join us and be part of building the bridge between life changing therapies and patients. Let’s talk future

Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Statement

PCI Pharma Services is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. We do not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, marital or domestic or civil union status, familial status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetics, disability, military eligibility or veteran status, or any other protected status.

At PCI, Equity and Inclusion are at the core of our company’s purpose: Together, delivering life-changing therapies. We are committed to cultivating an inclusive workplace by holding ourselves accountable to the highest standards of understanding, fairness, respect, and equal opportunity – at every level. We envision a PCI community where everyone can belong and grow, and we strive to bring this vision to reality by continuously and intentionally assessing our people practices, policies and programs, marketing approach, and workplace culture.