Associate Director, Field AI Product Lead

Job Description

Today, our organization is navigating an unprecedented opportunity challenge driven by a rapidly expanding pipeline, an accelerating pace of launches, and an increasingly complex and dynamic external environment. Success in this moment requires more than incremental improvement. It demands an entrepreneurial mindset, stronger digital, data, and AI capabilities, and a sustained focus on execution excellence, particularly within Human Health.

Field teams are expected to operate with greater agility, precision, and confidence across more products, more indications, and more nuanced customer interactions. Meeting this challenge requires scalable platforms that enable faster insight generation, smarter prioritization, and continuous capability building, while maintaining the highest standards of trust, compliance, and reliability.

Field Copilot aspires to address this challenge by equipping field‑based employees with intelligent, data‑driven support and immersive learning experiences that elevate execution at scale, and as we continue this journey, we are seeking a passionate and experienced Associate Director to lead Field Copilot.

In this role, you will own the end‑to‑end product strategy, development, and scale of Field Copilot as an evolving suite of agentic Field AI capabilities. These capabilities are designed to help field teams sense, decide, act, and learn with confidence. You will shape how intelligent assistance progresses from single‑step copilots to coordinated, multi‑step workflows that can plan, orchestrate, and execute tasks with appropriate human oversight, governance, and auditability. Critically, you will ensure the capabilities are built as interconnected, interoperable building blocks. They will share common data, identity, context, evaluation, and safety services so they can be composed into seamless end‑to‑end experiences rather than delivered as siloed tools. This includes capabilities such as AI‑powered field intelligence and pre‑call planning, as well as AI‑enabled training and coaching, delivered securely, responsibly, and at scale. Your work will help ensure high‑quality execution in the field while building durable internal capabilities that support our mission of saving and improving lives.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end‑to‑end strategy, design, development, and evolution of Field Copilot as an interoperable platform for agentic Field AI capabilities. Emphasize shared services, reusable components, and consistent user experiences alongside reliability, scalability, measurable business impact, and responsible use.

• Translate field and commercial needs into secure, compliant, and high‑impact AI solutions that improve sensing (insight generation), decision support (prioritization), action enablement (task completion), and capability building across business contexts.

• Own the product roadmap, prioritization, and delivery across markets. Sequence capability maturity from assistive experiences to agentic workflows, and balance standardization with market‑appropriate flexibility.

• Partner closely with commercial, IT, data, legal, privacy, compliance, and L&D stakeholders to ensure solutions are fit for purpose, responsibly governed, and aligned with enterprise standards.

• Evolve a portfolio of reusable Field AI capabilities such as insight generation, conversational decision support, workflow orchestration, and AI‑enabled learning. Engineer these capabilities for high interoperability through shared primitives (data and context, identity, permissions, evaluation, and safety guardrails) and clear integration contracts

• Provide strategic input and advisory guidance on foundational capabilities such as synthetic personas that support multiple use cases globally across business units.

• Drive change management, training, and adoption strategies that embed Field Copilot into daily workflows and enable measurable improvements in productivity, decision quality, and learning outcomes.

• Establish clear operating models, ways of working, and feedback loops with field teams to continuously refine the product based on real‑world usage and evolving business needs.

• Lead and develop a high‑performing, cross‑functional product team, including internal contributors and external partners, providing clear direction, mentorship, and regular performance feedback.

• Manage vendor and partner relationships to ensure delivery quality, cost effectiveness, and alignment with long‑term product strategy.

• Stay current with advancements in data, analytics, and applied AI, and selectively incorporate practical innovations into the platform. Examples include agentic assistance, workflow orchestration, and safe automation with guardrails. Focus on sustaining long‑term value.

Skills and Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, Data Analytics, Engineering, or a related discipline, with 8+ years of experience, or master’s degree in a similar field with 6+ years of experience.

• Proven experience leading advanced AI products in an enterprise with end‑to‑end accountability from concept through scaled deployment.

• Strong product leadership and technical acumen, with the ability to work effectively across data platforms, AI‑enabled capabilities, and modern application architectures without losing focus on user value.

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with cross‑functional stakeholders and influence outcomes across commercial, technical, and governance functions in a matrixed environment.

• Solid understanding of data fundamentals, with hands‑on experience interrogating data, ensuring data quality, and partnering with engineering teams to resolve issues.

• Demonstrated expertise in both operating within and shaping regulated environments, including defining and embedding privacy, compliance, and responsible AI practices across the product lifecycle.

• Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with a track record of turning ambiguous business challenges into clear, executable product direction.

• Experience operating in Agile or iterative development environments and guiding teams through continuous delivery and improvement cycles.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey complex concepts clearly to technical and non‑technical audiences.

This is a unique opportunity for a dynamic leader who is excited about leveraging data and generative AI to transform field operations. If you are passionate about empowering teams with cutting-edge technology, driving tangible business impact, and leading a pioneering product in a highly collaborative environment, we encourage you to apply and join us on this journey.

Required Skills:

Business Intelligence (BI), Data Visualization, Requirements Management, User Experience (UX) Design

Preferred Skills:

Current Employees apply HERE

Current Contingent Workers apply HERE

US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:

Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.

As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.  As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.  For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:

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We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another’s thinking and approach problems collectively.

Learn more about your rights, including under California, Colorado and other US State Acts

The salary range for this role is

$142,400.00 - $224,100.00

This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employee’s position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable.

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits.  Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days. More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits.

You can apply for this role through https://jobs.merck.com/us/en (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully 
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company.  No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails. 

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

N/A

Job Posting End Date:

07/2/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.