Senior Director, AI Business Partner – Enabling Functions

Senior Director, AI Business Partner – Enabling Functions

Gaithersburg, US

Introduction to role 

The AI Business Partner – Enabling Functions acts as the critical link between AstraZeneca’s core enabling capabilities and our enterprise AI agenda. Covering Legal, Procurement, Finance, Business Development, Audit, and Compliance, this position combines functional domain insight, hands-on delivery, and technical fluency to turn complex business processes into scalable AI solutions that deliver measurable outcomes. This is not a coordination role. It is a builder and owner role, working at the intersection of risk, regulation, and operational complexity to move AI from idea to impact responsibly and at pace. How will AI reshape the way we contract, spend, report, partner, audit, and stay compliant? This role exists to answer that question in practice.

Accountabilities

Lead strategy and portfolio ownership for AI across Enabling Functions, holding end-to-end accountability from roadmap definition through to value realisation. Shape and maintain a clear AI roadmap aligned to the priorities of Legal, Procurement, Finance, Business Development, Audit, and Compliance, balancing rapid experiments with longer-term transformation. Build robust business cases and value narratives that resonate with senior functional leaders, framing ROI in terms of risk reduction, process efficiency, cost avoidance, and decision quality. Embed reuse principles so that solutions built for one function can be adapted and scaled across others, maximising impact from each investment. 

Act as a high-fidelity translator between business and technology, engaging functional leaders, process owners, and subject matter experts to surface unmet needs and high-value decision points where AI can drive meaningful outcomes. Translate these needs into well-scoped AI use cases with clear problem statements, success metrics, data requirements, and risk tiering, while also explaining technical constraints and possibilities in language that drives decisions. Maintain sufficient technical depth to interrogate solution designs, challenge assumptions, and ensure approaches are right-sized for sensitive domains such as contract analysis, financial modelling, or regulatory monitoring. 

Drive hands-on delivery by partnering closely with enterprise AI teams and working directly with tools and data to accelerate progress. Lead rapid prototyping and proof-of-concept development using low-code and no-code platforms or in close collaboration with engineering teams, iterating quickly to validate ideas before full-scale build. Own the full solution lifecycle from pilot design through scaled deployment, adoption planning, KPI tracking, outcome measurement, and decommissioning where appropriate. Ensure robust evidence frameworks are in place to quantify value across areas such as contract cycle time reduction, audit exception detection rates, or forecast accuracy improvements. 

Lead change management for AI adoption in process-critical and risk-aware environments. Partner with functional leaders to embed AI-augmented practices into day-to-day operations rather than delivering isolated pilots. Identify required process shifts in workflows, approvals, document handling, and evidence standards, ensuring they are implemented sustainably and aligned with internal controls. Navigate the cultural dynamics of Enabling Functions where professional standards and regulatory accountability shape how change is received. Support AI literacy and upskilling by working with learning and HR teams on targeted capability-building programmes tailored to each function’s risk appetite and ways of working. 

Champion data, governance, and compliance as first-order responsibilities. Partner with data and technology teams to ensure data used in AI solutions is AI-ready and compliant with enterprise standards and relevant regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, the EU AI Act, SOX controls in Finance, and legal privilege considerations in Legal. Ensure each AI use case follows the enterprise governance framework, including registry-before-scale, model and data cards, ongoing monitoring, and human-in-the-loop oversight for high-stakes decisions. Maintain alignment with quality, legal, compliance, and safety requirements throughout the solution lifecycle so that AI outputs do not create regulatory or reputational exposure. 

Build and manage an ecosystem of partnerships that support Enabling Function priorities. Represent Enabling Functions in discussions with external partners such as legal technology vendors, procurement platforms, financial systems providers, and regulatory bodies. Shape pilots and joint programmes with strategic technology partners in areas like AI-assisted contract intelligence, automated spend classification, or continuous compliance monitoring. Feed market insights back into the roadmap so emerging capabilities in legal AI, procurement intelligence, or financial automation can accelerate AstraZeneca’s internal agenda. 

Integrate Enabling Functions into the broader enterprise AI organisation. Serve as the primary interface between Enabling Functions and enterprise AI teams to clarify ownership, priorities, and hand-offs. Contribute actively to enterprise forums on reuse, standards, and operating model evolution by sharing lessons learned from Enabling Function deployments that others across the business can adopt.

Essential Skills/Experience 

• Minimum 10+ year experience in life sciences or related, health sector or in consulting building and managing global teams in a complex matrix environment 
• Strong business acumen with proven ability to define and execute a strategic vision - translating business needs into actionable opportunities aligned with enterprise transformation goals. 
• Demonstrated experience: 
• Implementing and scaling digital, data, or AI-enabled solutions in clinical or life sciences settings. 
• Managing complex projects, with a track record of delivering on time, within budget, and to quality in large-scale, complex projects. 
• Defining and tracking KPIs, outcomes, and performance metrics. 
• Participating in capability building for teams to adopt and maximize value from AI-enabled tools. 
• Ability to lead through change and drive adoption of new ways of working. 
• Ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, such as data, AI, IT, as well as business, medical and clinical functions. 
• Excellent communication and influencing skills - working across business, medical, scientific, and technical stakeholders
• Ability to navigate and anticipate trends in data, technology and AI - translating them into actionable strategies for your AstraZeneca team and internal partners.  

When we put unexpected teams in the same room, we unleash bold thinking with the power to

inspire life-changing medicines. In-person working gives us the platform we need to connect, work at pace and challenge perceptions. That's why we work, on average, a minimum of three days per week from the office. But that doesn't mean we're not flexible. We balance the expectation of being in the office while respecting individual flexibility. Join us in our unique and ambitious world.

AstraZeneca offers an environment where technology talent works side by side with scientific expertise to disrupt an industry and change lives through data, analytics, AI and machine learning; where experimentation is encouraged through hackathons and modern engineering practices; where there is real investment in learning every day through coaching, feedback and exposure to cutting-edge tools; where diverse minds collaborate across functions to solve problems that have never been tackled before; and where the impact of optimising core operations is felt directly in the ability to deliver life-changing medicines to patients worldwide.

Ready to take ownership of an AI portfolio that sits at the heart of how AstraZeneca runs? Apply now.

The annual base pay for this position ranges from $203,213 - $304,820. Our positions offer eligibility for various incentives—an opportunity to receive short-term incentive bonuses, equity-based awards for salaried roles and commissions for sales roles. Benefits offered include qualified retirement programs, paid time off (i.e., vacation, holiday, and leaves), as well as health, dental, and vision coverage in accordance with the terms of the applicable plans.

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