Job Description
The Director AI Innovation Studios leads a small high-impact team of consultants analysts and facilitators that drives discovery and early incubation of AI opportunities across the enterprise. This is a hands-on director-level role that combines client-facing consulting and workshop facilitation with people leadership operational ownership of a studio team and accountability for moving well-scoped opportunities into rapid proofs-of-concept (PoCs) prototypes and handoff to Product or Delivery teams. The Director will translate business challenges into measurable AI use cases create compelling business cases and success criteria and ensure rigorous ethical and outcome-focused execution across discovery and early delivery phases.
Key responsibilities
Practice leadership & strategy
Contribute to the vision and operating model for the AI Innovation Studios aligned to APEX/Compass priorities and the Chief AI Officers strategy.
Define Studio methodologies templates toolkits intake and prioritization criteria and measurable success metrics for discovery engagements and rapid PoCs.
Maintain relationships with adjacent APEX functions (Product Management Portfolio Management Engagement Process Intelligence Data Science/AI engineering) to enable efficient handoffs and access to technical expertise.
Team leadership & talent development
Lead coach and grow a compact team of 57 full-time consultants analysts and facilitators all direct reports cultivating a high-trust collaborative and delivery-focused culture.
Hire develop and retain Studio practitioners; run performance management career development and workforce planning for the team.
Balance hands-on participation in engagements with enabling team members to lead discovery and PoC work autonomously.
Client engagement & discovery
Serve as primary consultant for high-priority discovery engagements with business-area leaders and Divisional IT leads: design and run opportunity identification workshops rapid discovery sprints process & data analysis stakeholder alignment sessions and ideation activities.
Translate workshop outputs into clearly scoped opportunity assessments: problem statement proposed AI approach expected benefits cost/effort estimate success criteria and risks.
Act as a trusted advisor to divisional partners ensuring Studios engagements shift thinking from possible to actionable.
Rapid prototyping & PoC oversight
Own initiation and oversight of rapid PoCs and prototypes generated from discovery: set hypotheses define acceptance criteria coordinate technical resources and monitor progress against timelines and outcomes.
Ensure PoCs produce measurable evidence (metrics demos validated assumptions) to support go/no-go decisions and handoff to Product/Delivery.
Partner with Product Management and Delivery to create clear transition plans technical readiness checklists and business case updates.
Governance prioritization & portfolio alignment
Operate within Compass portfolio governance and prioritization frameworks: triage incoming Studio requests recommend investment and sequencing decisions and ensure alignment to enterprise priorities and capacity.
Track and report Studio pipeline health conversion rates time-to-PoC ROI estimates and stakeholder satisfaction to the ED of AI Compass and other executive stakeholders.
Ethics risk & adoption
Embed best practices for safe ethical equitable and regulatory-compliant AI in all discovery and PoC activities.
Identify adoption risks and change-management needs early; help create stakeholder engagement plans success criteria and measures to accelerate adoption and value realization.
Methods tools & partnerships
Lead use of a broad array of discovery tools and workshop methods (design thinking business analysis process mapping prioritization frameworks Miro/MURAL etc.).
Coordinate with internal APEX subject-matter experts (process intelligence data science ML engineers security privacy legal) and manage occasional engagement of external partners/vendors for specialized capabilities.
Success metrics
Number of qualified AI opportunities identified per quarter and per business area.
Pipeline conversion rate: % of discovery engagements that progress to funded PoC or product incubation.
Time-to-PoC: median time from intake to PoC kickoff.
Handoff conversion rate: % of PoCs that transition to Product/Delivery with clear business cases.
Average (and aggregate) estimated ROI or value of opportunities advanced.
Stakeholder satisfaction and trust (partner NPS or equivalent).
Team health indicators: retention competency growth and utilization.
Required qualifications & skills
Bachelors degree in math computer science or related field.
8 years of professional experience in consulting strategy product discovery business analysis or related roles; experience leading teams and client engagements.
Demonstrated track record (3 years preferred) of discovering scoping or delivering AI automation or advanced analytics initiatives with measurable business outcomes.
Strong facilitation and consulting skills: proven ability to design and lead workshops stakeholder interviews ideation sessions and executive briefings.
Excellent business acumen and financial literacy: ability to build credible business cases ROI estimates and value hypotheses.
Strong people leadership skills with experience managing and developing individual contributors in a hybrid distributed environment.
Exceptional communication skills: translate complex AI concepts into actionable business language and craft concise persuasive artifacts for executives.
Experience with discovery-to-PoC processes and working closely with product managers data scientists ML engineers and delivery teams.
Familiarity with ethical regulatory and governance considerations for AI deployments.
Preferred qualifications
Experience in life sciences healthcare or regulated industries.
Prior consulting experience (management consulting or internal strategy/innovation practices).
Hands-on technical familiarity with ML/AI concepts and prototyping approaches (data exploration simple model prototyping prompt engineering or working with ML/LLM teams).
Experience operating within enterprise portfolio governance and prioritization frameworks.
Organizational context & operating expectations
This Director will report to the Executive Director AI Compass and will partner regularly with Product Management Portfolio Management Engagement Delivery Security & Privacy and divisional IT leads.
The role is expected to be both strategically minded and operationally grounded: roughly balancing enabling/mentoring the team and personally leading high-priority engagements.
All team members are U.S.-based and work in a hybrid model; in-person travel to business locations is expected as required (up to 75%).
Required Skills:
Accountability Business Analysis Business Case Development Client Counseling Communication Design Thinking Distributed Systems Emerging Technologies Financial Decision Making Identifying Opportunities Leadership Management Consulting Operational Acceptance Testing (OAT) Portfolio Management Prioritization Product Management Prototyping Requirements Management Solution Architecture Stakeholder Engagement Stakeholder Relationship Management Technical Advice Transition Management User Experience (UX) Design Waterfall ModelPreferred Skills:
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Effective September 5 2023 employees in office-based positions in the U.S. will be working a Hybrid work consisting of three total days on-site per week Monday - Thursday although the specific days may vary by site or organization with Friday designated as a remote-working day unless business critical tasks require an on-site Hybrid work model does not apply to and daily in-person attendance is required for field-based positions; facility-based manufacturing-based or research-based positions where the work to be performed is located at a Company site; positions covered by a collective-bargaining agreement (unless the agreement provides for hybrid work); or any other position for which the Company has determined the job requirements cannot be reasonably met working remotely. Please note this Hybrid work model guidance also does not apply to roles that have been designated as remote.
The salary range for this role is
$169700.00 - $267200.00This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employees position within the salary range will be based on several factors including but not limited to relevant education qualifications certifications experience skills geographic location government requirements and business or organizational needs.
The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive if applicable.
We offer a comprehensive package of benefits. Available benefits include medical dental vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family) retirement benefits including 401(k) paid holidays vacation and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at can apply for this role through (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.
San Francisco Residents Only:We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
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RegularRelocation:
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10%Flexible Work Arrangements:
RemoteShift:
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12/6/2025*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFOREthe listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.
Required Experience:
Director
Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, New Jersey, USA is known as “Merck” in the United States, Canada & Puerto Rico. We are known as “MSD” in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America & Asia Pacific. We are a global biopharmaceutical leader with a diverse portfolio of prescription medicine ... View more