Associate Director AI Solutions Architect

Job Description Summary

Job Description

Major accountabilities:

Enterprise AI Solution Architecture

• Design and deliver scalable AI and GenAI solutions leveraging AWS Bedrock, Azure AI Foundry / Azure OpenAI, and GCP Vertex AI / Gemini services.

• Architect end-to-end enterprise AI applications including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Graph AI, multi-agent orchestration, and conversational AI use cases. Build reusable reference architectures, enterprise design patterns, and solution blueprints to accelerate AI adoption across Novartis.

• Design integration patterns connecting AI solutions with enterprise data platforms, APIs, business systems, and knowledge repositories.

Cloud-Native AI Platform Engineering

• Leverage cloud-native AI and orchestration services across AWS, Azure, and GCP to enable scalable and resilient AI application delivery.

• Architect AI runtimes using services such as AWS Lambda/EKS, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and event-driven integration patterns. Enable enterprise AI capabilities including prompt management, model lifecycle management, vector search, observability, and guardrails.

• Collaborate with platform engineering teams to operationalize AI workloads with high availability, security, scalability, and performance optimization.

Multi-Agent & GenAI Enablement

• Lead solutioning for multi-agent AI systems and orchestration frameworks leveraging LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, DSPy, and cloud-native agentic AI capabilities.

• Architect enterprise AI solutions leveraging Bedrock Agents, Azure AI Agents, and Vertex AI Agent frameworks. Drive implementation of enterprise GenAI use cases across Business Units including intelligent search, automation, copilots, and AI assistants.

• Support AI model integration, evaluation, prompt engineering, and fine-tuning strategies across multiple cloud ecosystems.

Technology Evaluation & Innovation

• Evaluate emerging AI technologies, foundation models, and cloud-native AI capabilities across AWS, Azure, and GCP ecosystems. Lead proof-of-concept (PoC) initiatives to validate scalability, feasibility, security, and operational readiness of new AI solutions.

• Partner with hyperscalers and strategic vendors to align enterprise AI strategy with evolving cloud AI innovation. Contribute to enterprise AI architecture standards, innovation forums, and design governance processes.

Governance, Security & Compliance

• Ensure all AI solution architectures align with responsible AI principles, GDPR, HIPAA, GxP validation requirements, and the EU AI Act. Define cloud security controls and governance standards for AI workloads including IAM, encryption, networking, auditability, and compliance monitoring.

• Embed enterprise AI governance, observability, model monitoring, and risk management controls across all deployed AI solutions. Collaborate with Security, Legal, Compliance, and Risk teams to ensure AI solutions meet enterprise and regulatory standards.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Act as a trusted advisor to Business Units and product teams, translating business requirements into scalable and pragmatic AI architectures. Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineering teams and AI solution architects across global delivery teams.

• Represent the AI Architecture function in architecture reviews, governance boards, and enterprise stakeholder discussions. Drive collaboration across enterprise architecture, cloud engineering, data platforms, and MLOps teams to ensure alignment and scalability.

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s / Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI/ML, Cloud Computing, or equivalent.

• 14+ years of experience in enterprise IT/solution architecture including 5+ years in AI/ML and 3+ years in GenAI solutions.

• Hands-on expertise across multiple cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, and GCP with deep understanding of their AI/ML ecosystems. Strong experience architecting enterprise AI applications leveraging AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI / Azure AI Foundry, and GCP Vertex AI / Gemini.

• Experience designing RAG systems, Graph AI solutions, multi-agent orchestration frameworks, and enterprise AI integrations. Hands-on knowledge of MLOps, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD automation, and enterprise observability frameworks.

• Strong understanding of AI governance, cloud security, compliance, and regulatory requirements including GDPR, HIPAA, GxP, and EU AI Act. Cloud certifications preferred across AWS, Azure, and/or GCP ecosystems.

• Experience in pharma, healthcare, or life sciences industry highly preferred.

• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, and DSPy. Excellent communication, executive presentation, and stakeholder management skills.

Why Novartis?

Our purpose is to reimagine medicine to improve and extend people’s lives and our vision is to become the most valued and trusted medicines company in the world. How can we achieve this? With our people. It is our associates that drive us each day to reach our ambitions. Be a part of this mission and join us!
Learn more here:

https://www.novartis.com/about/strategy/people-and-culture

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:
Novartis is committed to building an outstanding, inclusive work environment and diverse teams' representative of the patients and communities we serve.
Join our Novartis Network: If this role is not suitable to your experience or career goals but you wish to stay connected to hear more about Novartis and our career opportunities, join the Novartis Network here:
https://talentnetwork.novartis.com/network

Skills Desired