Director, AI Platforms
About this role
When our values align, there's no limit to what we can achieve.
At Parexel, we all share the same goal - to improve the world's health. From clinical trials to regulatory, consulting, and market access, every clinical development solution we provide is underpinned by something special - a deep conviction in what we do.
Each of us, no matter what we do at Parexel, contributes to the development of a therapy that ultimately will benefit a patient. We take our work personally, we do it with empathy and we're committed to making a difference.
About Parexel
Parexel is a leading global clinical development partner delivering insights-driven clinical and consulting solutions to the life sciences industry. With 22,000+ employees worldwide, we partner with biopharmaceutical companies and research sites to design and deliver patient-focused clinical trials that broaden access and make research a care option for anyone, anywhere.
We work with focus, agility, and shared purpose -- moving with urgency to address patient needs and accelerate the delivery of new therapies. We embrace bold thinking, adapt quickly to change, and continually raise the bar for the speed and quality of clinical research. We are expanding our team and seeking talented individuals to help drive industry leading innovation, With Heart(R).
About the Role
We are seeking a Director, AI Platforms to join our team. As a Director, AI Platforms, you will lead the engineering team responsible for the shared technical foundation that powers AI delivery across Parexel. This position plays a key role in platform strategy, infrastructure reliability, vendor management, and cross-functional partnership to ensure AI platforms are scalable, dependable, and accessible to internal product teams, sponsor-funded delivery pods, and citizen developers. You'll collaborate with Engineering, AI Solution Direction, Quality, and the centralized Infrastructure organization to shape AI infrastructure at enterprise scale.
You'll join a fast-paced, growth-oriented environment focused on making a meaningful impact through strategic platform engineering, vendor partnerships, and technical leadership. With diverse teams and continuous learning opportunities, the Director, AI Platforms can explore career paths and expand influence across enterprise AI delivery.
Key Responsibilities:
Define and evolve AI platform strategy in alignment with Parexel's enterprise AI direction and own architectural decisions for AI-first platforms
Ensure platform reliability, performance, and observability for AI workloads in production, establishing service-level expectations and consumption models that support internal squads and sponsor pods
Manage day-to-day operational relationships with AI-specific vendors, track vendor performance and contracts, and serve as the first escalation point for vendor-specific platform issues
Lead incident response and continuous improvement for AI-specific platform issues, partnering with centralized support organizations on service management
Work closely with Engineering, Quality, and Compliance to ensure platform capabilities meet product delivery needs and audit readiness
Lead a small, high-trust team of platform engineers, recruit and develop talent at senior IC and engineering levels, and foster a working-leader culture
You'll thrive in this role if you bring:
Deep technical expertise in cloud-based platform engineering with a service-oriented mindset and ability to make architectural trade-offs
Experience operating AI platforms in production and familiarity with AI infrastructure, GenAI runtimes, vector databases, and agent orchestration
Vendor management experience including contract terms, performance management, and commercial negotiation
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, particularly with engineering, vendor, and business stakeholders
Comfort in a regulated environment with familiarity in life sciences or another GxP-adjacent industry
Required Qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or related field
10+ years in platform engineering, data engineering, or AI/ML infrastructure roles
Direct experience operating AI platforms in production (GenAI runtimes, vector databases, agent orchestration, MLOps tooling, evaluation infrastructure)
Experience working with cloud platforms (AWS or Azure)
Strong communication, organization, and problem-solving skills
Preferred Qualifications:
Master's degree in technical discipline
Familiarity with Palantir Foundry, enterprise GenAI platforms, or custom assistant infrastructure (e.g., Copilot Studio, Anthropic-based platforms)
Experience navigating shared infrastructure organizations
We believe in flexibility, growth, and creating space for people to do their best work. Join us and be part of a team where your contributions help shape the future of clinical research.
If this job doesn't sound like the next step in your career, but perhaps you know of someone who'd be a perfect fit, send them the link to apply!