Director, AI Product, Innovation & Emerging Technology
Pfizer· startup· Pharmaceuticals· Oct 23, 2026 · 3d ago
United States New York New York City
In office
Full-time
Director
$163K–$272K
8+ years exp
Job description
ROLE SUMMARY
The Director, AI Product, Innovation & Emerging Technology reports to the Sr. Director AI Product Innovation Lead within the PGS Data, Analytics & AI Transformation Organization. This role combines strategic product leadership with hands-on agentic AI expertise to identify, evaluate, and advance transformative AI opportunities across PGS. The position drives the development and productization of high-impact, enterprise-scale AI use cases that deliver measurable business value while accelerating Pfizer s adoption of emerging technologies.
The Director partners closely with senior business leaders, Digital, platform engineering, and the agentic AI delivery team to translate emerging capabilities into scalable business solutions. This individual personally builds and iterates rapid, working agentic prototypes to test feasibility, refine requirements, and demonstrate value before committing to production development. With practical knowledge of agent architectures, tools, data integration, and evaluation, the Director serves as a credible technical partner to delivery engineers while shaping investment strategies, value cases, and AI priorities.
As a champion of product excellence and responsible AI practices, the Director helps establish product management standards, governance, and innovation frameworks that enable sustainable scaling. The role bridges business discovery, hands-on experimentation, and engineering delivery, partnering with the agentic delivery team on production readiness while that team retains ownership of production engineering, deployment, and operational support.
ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES
Define and drive the AI product innovation strategy for emerging and transformative use cases across PGS, identifying opportunities that deliver significant business impact and long-term competitive advantage.
Lead the discovery, assessment, and productization of lighthouse AI initiatives, establishing clear business outcomes, success measures, and pathways from concept through production and enterprise adoption.
Personally design, build, and iterate rapid agentic AI prototypes using enterprise-approved platforms, agent frameworks, and lightweight code. Use working, tool-enabled workflows to test business hypotheses and incorporate user feedback in short cycles.
Translate business processes into agent workflow designs, defining goals, data sources, tool interactions, human approval points, and exception handling. Establish representative evaluation scenarios and acceptance criteria covering task success, output quality, safe tool use, latency, and cost to inform proceed, pivot, or stop decisions.
Partner with the agentic delivery team from discovery through implementation, contributing to technical design reviews and backlog refinement. Provide prototype code or configurations, workflow specifications, evaluation results, and known limitations to accelerate engineering delivery and reduce rework.
Serve as a strategic advisor to senior leaders, influencing AI investment priorities and helping stakeholders evaluate opportunities, risks, value realization, and resource requirements.
Develop and socialize robust business cases, investment recommendations, and value realization frameworks that support funding decisions and executive sponsorship.
Monitor and evaluate emerging AI technologies, foundation models, industry trends, and competitive developments, translating external insights into actionable opportunities for Pfizer.
Partner with agentic delivery, Digital, platform engineering, data, and architecture leaders to assess model and orchestration choices, integration dependencies, and trade-offs across reliability, cost, latency, and scalability. Align solutions with enterprise standards and reusable capabilities rather than creating isolated prototypes.
Establish and promote best practices for AI product management, innovation governance, and responsible AI adoption. Embed approved data access, least-privilege tool permissions, human oversight, traceability, and risk-appropriate evaluation into prototypes, and partner with Quality and delivery teams on applicable GxP and production-readiness requirements.
Influence enterprise product strategy and roadmap decisions by identifying reusable solutions, scaling opportunities, and cross-functional synergies that maximize business value.
Act as a recognized thought leader and visible ambassador for AI product innovation, communicating complex technology trends and opportunities to executive stakeholders in a clear and compelling manner.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
Bachelor s degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field with at least 8 years of relevant experience; OR a master s degree with at least 7 years of experience.
Significant experience in product management and innovation leadership, including taking early-stage concepts through experimentation, productization, and adoption at scale.
Hands-on knowledge of large language models (LLMs) and agentic AI, including prompt and context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool/function calling, orchestration, state and memory, and human-in-the-loop controls. Ability to determine when an agent, a simpler AI workflow, or conventional automation is appropriate.
Demonstrated ability to personally build and iterate working agentic prototypes using at least one agent-building platform or framework, connecting models to tools and approved data sources. Experience using prototypes to validate feasibility, gather user feedback, and refine product requirements beyond prompt-only demonstrations.
Practical technical proficiency to write, read, and debug lightweight Python or JavaScript, work with application programming interfaces (APIs) and structured data, and inspect agent execution traces and evaluation results. Sufficient depth to engage engineers on architecture, integration, failure modes, and production-readiness trade-offs.
Proven track record developing business cases, investment strategies, and value realization frameworks that have secured executive sponsorship and funding.
Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders and drive strategic decisions across highly matrixed organizations without direct authority.
Strong understanding of AI governance, responsible AI practices, product operating models, and enterprise delivery frameworks, including the distinction between an experimental prototype and a secure, tested, monitored, and supportable production solution.
Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts into business outcomes for senior leadership audiences.
Demonstrated thought leadership through industry engagement, external partnerships, innovation forums, speaking opportunities, publications, or enterprise-wide influence.
Proven ability to shape organizational capabilities, standards, and ways of working that drive sustained business impact beyond individual projects.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Strong external network across the AI vendor and technology ecosystem, with a track record of translating outside innovation into internal pilots and success stories.
Experience with code-first agent frameworks, enterprise agent platforms, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and reusable tool or skill libraries. Experience partnering with engineering teams to advance prototypes into production, including evaluation automation, observability, version control, and release practices.
Experience standing up or contributing to a product guild, center of excellence, or similar cross-enterprise standards body.
Deep Pfizer colleague network, particularly across PGS, Digital, and Data, Analytics & AI Transformation, with a track record of building sponsorship for bold ideas in complex, matrixed environments.
Experience applying AI to pharmaceutical manufacturing, supply chain, quality, or technology transfer, with an understanding of intended use, risk-based validation, auditability, and human oversight for GxP-relevant use cases.
Advanced knowledge of responsible AI principles and how they apply to novel product development.
NON-STANDARD WORK SCHEDULE, TRAVEL OR ENVIRONMENT REQUIREMENTS
Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 15% of the year, including to vendor briefings, industry events, and external communities of practice.
Willingness to work off-hours to accommodate global time zones and support use case teams and stakeholders across sites.
Willingness to work extended or non-standard hours during peak periods, such as major pilot launches, business case reviews, or executive readouts.
ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
PGS AI Strategy & Realization Team and Data, Analytics & AI Transformation Org.
Senior PGS & Digital Leaders.
Agentic AI delivery team, platform engineering, solution architecture, and Application Delivery teams—close partners in technical discovery, prototype evaluation, production engineering, and scaling.
Digital product, platform, and innovation teams, including the Product Guild.
External vendors, industry peers, and communities of practice.
PGS Portfolio and Finance partners.
OTHER INFORMATION
Last Date to Apply: October 30, 2026
The annual base salary for this position ranges from $162,900.00 to $271,500.00. In addition, this position is eligible for participation in Pfizer’s Global Performance Plan with a bonus target of 20.0% of the base salary and eligibility to participate in our share based long term incentive program. We offer comprehensive and generous benefits and programs to help our colleagues lead healthy lives and to support each of life’s moments. Benefits offered include a 401(k) plan with Pfizer Matching Contributions and an additional Pfizer Retirement Savings Contribution, paid vacation, holiday and personal days, paid caregiver/parental and medical leave, and health benefits to include medical, prescription drug, dental and vision coverage. Learn more at Pfizer Candidate Site – U.S. Benefits | (uscandidates.mypfizerbenefits.com). Pfizer compensation structures and benefit packages are aligned based on the location of hire. The United States salary range provided does not apply to Tampa, FL or any location outside of the United States.
This role is posted in multiple locations. If you are applying for the role in an secondary job posting location where pay transparency regulations apply, your Talent Advisor will share the local pay information with you during the first interview.
Relocation assistance may be available based on business needs and/or eligibility.
Candidates must be authorized to be employed in the U.S. by any employer.
U.S. work visa sponsorship (such as TN, O-1, H-1B, etc.) is not available for this role now or in the future.
Sunshine Act
Pfizer reports payments and other transfers of value to health care providers as required by federal and state transparency laws and implementing regulations. These laws and regulations require Pfizer to provide government agencies with information such as a health care provider’s name, address and the type of payments or other value received, generally for public disclosure. Subject to further legal review and statutory or regulatory clarification, which Pfizer intends to pursue, reimbursement of recruiting expenses for licensed physicians may constitute a reportable transfer of value under the federal transparency law commonly known as the Sunshine Act. Therefore, if you are a licensed physician who incurs recruiting expenses as a result of interviewing with Pfizer that we pay or reimburse, your name, address and the amount of payments made currently will be reported to the government. If you have questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact your Talent Acquisition representative.
EEO & Employment Eligibility
Pfizer is committed to equal opportunity in the terms and conditions of employment for all employees and job applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or gender expression, national origin, disability or veteran status. Pfizer also complies with all applicable national, state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment as well as work authorization and employment eligibility verification requirements of the Immigration and Nationality Act and IRCA. Pfizer is an E-Verify employer. This position requires permanent work authorization in the United States.
Pfizer endeavors to make www.pfizer.com/careers accessible to all users. If you would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or need assistance completing the application process and/or interviewing, please email disabilityrecruitment pfizer.com . This is to be used solely for accommodation requests with respect to the accessibility of our website, online application process and/or interviewing. Requests for any other reason will not be returned.
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 .
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Benefits
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Dental
Vision
401(K)