Director, Operations IT - AI Engineering
AstraZeneca15 hours ago
Barcelona, SpainStaff+
Responsibilities
- Define and evolve reference architectures, design patterns, and delivery playbooks for Generative AI, AI Agents, and Digital Twins.
- Set technical quality, architecture, code, and production-readiness standards across AI engineering teams.
- Establish and chair technical review forums and communities of practice.
- Track emerging AI products, vendors, LLMs, agent frameworks, and Digital Twin platforms and translate innovations into practical guidance.
- Embed in critical or at-risk programs to unblock technical challenges, review designs and code, and course-correct delivery.
- Assess risks, requirements, and dependencies with project and program leads and advise on mitigation strategies.
- Provide hands-on technical consultancy to estimate, prioritize, and scope AI initiatives.
- Engage senior stakeholders, external partners, and vendors to shape the AI delivery agenda.
- Collaborate with innovation teams to identify, prototype, and socialize strategic technical capabilities.
- Mentor and upskill engineers and serve as a technical coach and escalation point without formal line management.
- Represent AI Engineering in governance, architecture, and leadership forums and communicate technical trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in operations research, mathematics, computer science, or a related quantitative field.
- At least 10 years of professional experience delivering ML/AI projects, including at least 5 years as a technical lead, principal engineer, or architect across multiple concurrent initiatives.
- Demonstrated ability to set technical direction and raise delivery standards across teams without formal line management authority.
- Advanced expertise in Python and familiarity with database systems such as Snowflake and Neo4j.
- Deep hands-on expertise designing, building, and productionizing Generative AI and agentic systems at scale.
- Strong understanding of frontend and backend software development, algorithms, optimization, and scaling.
- Excellent communication, business analysis, and stakeholder-influencing skills with the credibility to advise senior leaders.
- A master’s degree or PhD in a relevant quantitative field is preferred.
- AWS cloud services, cloud engineering, LangGraph or other agent orchestration frameworks, and Digital Twin platforms such as Azure Digital Twins, NVIDIA Omniverse, or AnyLogic are preferred.
- Experience establishing technical governance structures, centers of excellence, or architecture review boards is preferred.
- Conference speaking, published thought leadership, or open-source contributions in Generative AI or agentic AI are preferred.
Benefits
- Average minimum of three days per week working from the office, with flexibility balanced around the in-person expectation.
- Applications are open until 23 October 2026; the posting date is 9 October 2026.
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About AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca is a global biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures, and commercializes prescription medicines for patients and healthcare systems. Its portfolio spans oncology, cardiovascular, renal and metabolism, respiratory and immunology, and rare diseases (expanded by the 2021 acquisition of Alexion). Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Cambridge, UK, it is a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, generating revenue primarily from drug sales and partnerships.