Senior Director, Head of Application Engineering and Productionization

The AI Acceleration (AIA) function within the Chief Marketing Office (CMO) is the business-led team that owns the design, delivery, and scale-up of priority AI capabilities across Commercial. AIA works in tight collaboration with various Pfizer functions to deploy and maintain production-grade AI solutions that simplify how we work and drive measurable value across all processes.

The Senior Director of Application Engineering & Productionization is responsible for translating strategic priorities into the delivery of scalable, secure, enterprise‑grade applications and AI/ML solutions. This role leads large, multi‑disciplinary technology teams to design, and build high‑quality systems with a strong emphasis on execution, reliability, and continuous improvement. The leader establishes robust engineering standards—including architecture, CI/CD, testing, and observability—to ensure consistent delivery and production excellence. Success in this role requires guiding teams through ambiguity, developing senior engineering talent, and partnering closely with product, platform, data, and operations stakeholders to align technical decisions with business outcomes while effectively communicating trade‑offs and progress to senior leadership.

ROLE 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.
  • Make architectural decisions on front-end, full-stack, cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP), and CI/CD pipelines, to ensure scalability, performance, and security.
  • Partner with the Heads of Agent Product Management, 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.
  • Lead front-end and full-stack development teams in implementing secure, scalable interfaces and integrations with enterprise systems and APIs.
  • Establish and govern CI/CD pipelines, release management, and environment configuration for applications and maintain alignment with security and quality standards.
  • 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.
  • Oversee the implementation of automated testing, logging, and observability platforms to ensure operational excellence.
  • 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, hundreds of contractors) across front-end, full-stack, DevOps, and architecture disciplines.
  • Set strong technical direction, review design and code, and mentor senior engineers and engineering managers to raise the organizational engineering bar.
  • 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.
  • Work with the Data Strategy & Performance team to align engineering practices with enterprise governance, security, and compliance requirements.
  • Maintain close feedback loops with users and stakeholders to shape application roadmaps based on adoption, performance, and business 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.
  • Stay current on emerging trends in application engineering, AI integration, and cloud infrastructure, applying these insights to strengthen engineering practices and drive innovation.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Candidate demonstrates a breadth of diverse leadership experiences and capabilities including: the ability to influence and collaborate with peers, develop and coach others, oversee and guide the work of other colleagues to achieve meaningful outcomes and create business impact.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field required; Master’s degree strongly preferred.
• Proven people‑leadership experience, with a track record of building and developing high‑performing teams.
• Experience working within regulated industries (e.g., pharmaceuticals, banking, insurance).
• Demonstrated ability to navigate and influence within large, complex organizations.
• Strong stakeholder‑management capabilities, with success driving alignment across diverse functions and seniority levels.
• Recognized industry thought leader with enterprise‑wide strategic impact.
• Demonstrated program and operations management expertise, particularly within large, regulated environments.
• Proven success managing quality standards, leading efficient development teams, and optimizing complex staffing and resource allocation models.
• Deep expertise in cross‑functional integration and operational effectiveness within a large corporate ecosystem.

Purpose

Breakthroughs that change patients' lives... At Pfizer we are a patient centric company, guided by our four values: courage, joy, equity and excellence. Our breakthrough culture lends itself to our dedication to transforming millions of lives.

Digital Transformation Strategy

One bold way we are achieving our purpose is through our company wide digital transformation strategy. We are leading the way in adopting new data, modelling and automated solutions to further digitize and accelerate drug discovery and development with the aim of enhancing health outcomes and the patient experience.

Flexibility

We aim to create a trusting, flexible workplace culture which encourages employees to achieve work life harmony, attracts talent and enables everyone to be their best working self. Let’s start the conversation!

Equal Employment Opportunity

We believe that a diverse and inclusive workforce is crucial to building a successful business. As an employer, Pfizer is committed to celebrating this, in all its forms – allowing for us to be as diverse as the patients and communities we serve. Together, we continue to build a culture that encourages, supports and empowers our employees.

DisAbility Confident

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer and we encourage you to put your best self forward with the knowledge and trust that we will make any reasonable adjustments necessary to support your application and future career. Our mission is unleashing the power of our people, especially those with unique superpowers. Your journey with Pfizer starts here!

To learn more about acceptable and prohibited uses of AI during the recruitment process, please review our candidate AI-use guidelines available on Pfizer Careers.