Senior Director, Head of Application Engineering and Productionization

Role Summary

The AI Acceleration (AIA) function within the Chief Marketing Office (CMO) drives the design, delivery, and scale-up of priority AI capabilities across Commercial. AIA collaborates with Pfizer functions to deploy production-grade AI solutions that simplify work and deliver measurable value. Lead the application engineering and productionization function to design, build, and scale enterprise applications and AI/ML solutions, working closely with the Platform Ops team in Digital to deliver effective deployments.

Responsibilities

• Strategy & architecture: Define the overall strategy and governance model for application engineering and productionization, establishing frameworks, patterns, and standards for how AI and digital products are built, deployed, and maintained
• Strategy & architecture: Align on architectural decisions on front-end, full-stack, cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), and CI/CD pipelines, to ensure scalability, performance, and security
• Strategy & architecture: Partner with the Heads of Agent Product Management, Full Stack Development, Data Engineering, and Data Strategy to maintain consistent architecture, shared infrastructure, and unified engineering standards across AIA
• Build & ship (governance level): Oversee the design, development, and rollout of applications and tools used across AIA pods, with a focus on reuse and maintainability
• Build & ship: Lead front-end and full-stack development teams in implementing secure, scalable interfaces and integrations with enterprise systems and APIs
• Build & ship: Establish, govern and align to CI/CD pipelines, release management, and environment configuration for applications and maintain alignment with security and quality standards
• Build & ship: Collaborate with agent and AI/ML engineering teams to move AI/ML models into production with strong deployment, versioning, and monitoring practices
• Quality & reliability: Define quality standards and performance metrics for applications covering uptime, latency, reliability, and user experience
• Quality & reliability: Oversee the implementation of automated testing, logging, and observability platforms to ensure operational excellence
• Quality & reliability: Establish mechanisms for proactive issue detection, incident response, and continuous improvement of application stability and security
• Team & culture: Build and lead a high-performing engineering organization (~30 FTEs) across front-end, full-stack, DevOps, and architecture disciplines
• Team & culture: Set strong technical direction, review design and code, and mentor senior engineers and engineering managers to raise the organizational engineering bar
• Team & culture: Foster a culture of technical excellence, accountability, and continuous learning, emphasizing reusable components, automation, and engineering rigor
• Cross-functional impact: Partner with Data Engineering, Product, Agent Product Management, and Platform Ops teams to ensure seamless integration of applications with data pipelines, APIs, and orchestration frameworks
• Cross-functional impact: Work with the Data Strategy & Performance team to align engineering practices with enterprise governance, security, and compliance requirements
• Cross-functional impact: Maintain close feedback loops with users and stakeholders to shape application roadmaps based on adoption, performance, and business impact
• Cross-functional impact: Communicate technical decisions, trade-offs, and implications clearly to senior leadership, connecting architecture and engineering choices to business outcomes
• Innovation & best practices: Promote adoption of modern software development methodologies and tooling, including agile delivery, DevOps, and continuous delivery frameworks
• Innovation & best practices: Stay current on emerging trends in application engineering, AI integration, and cloud infrastructure, applying these insights to strengthen engineering practices and drive innovation

Qualifications

• Required: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; Master’s degree strongly preferred
• Required: 12+ years of relevant professional experience
• Required: Proven people-leadership experience, with a track record of building and developing high-performing teams
• Required: Experience working within regulated industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals, banking, insurance)
• Required: Demonstrated ability to navigate and influence within large, complex organizations
• Required: Strong stakeholder-management capabilities, with success driving alignment across diverse functions and seniority levels
• Required: Recognized industry thought leader with enterprise-wide strategic impact
• Required: Demonstrated program and operations management expertise, particularly within large, regulated environments
• Required: Proven success managing quality standards, leading efficient development teams, and optimizing complex staffing and resource allocation models
• Required: Deep expertise in cross-functional integration and operational effectiveness within a large corporate ecosystem

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; Master’s degree strongly preferred

Additional Requirements

• Last Date to Apply for Job: January 30th, 2026
• Ability to travel based on business needs
• NOT eligible for Relocation Package
• This position is hybrid and requires working onsite 2 to 3 days per week

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