Lead ML&AI Operations Engineer - Evinova

Job Title: Lead ML&AI Operations Engineer - Evinova
Location: Gaithersburg, MD

At AstraZeneca, we pride ourselves on crafting a collaborative culture that champions knowledge-sharing, ambitious thinking and innovation – ultimately providing employees with the opportunity to work across teams, functions and even the globe. 

Recognizing the importance of individualized flexibility, our ways of working allow employees to balance personal and work commitments while ensuring we continue to create a strong culture of collaboration and teamwork by engaging face-to-face in our offices 3 days a week. Our head is purposely designed with collaboration in mind, providing space where teams can come together to strategize, brainstorm and connect on key projects. 

Are you ready to be part of the future of healthcare? Are you able to think big, be bold and harness the power of digital and AI to tackle longstanding life sciences challenges?  Then Evinova, a new healthtech business part of the AstraZeneca Group might be for you! 

Evinova delivers market-leading digital health solutions that are science-based, evidence-led and human experience-driven. Smart risks and quick decisions come together to accelerate innovation across the life sciences sector. Be part of a diverse team that pushes the boundaries of science by digitally empowering a deeper understanding of the patients we’re helping. Launch game-changing digital solutions that improve the patient experience and deliver better health outcomes. Together, we have the opportunity to combine deep scientific expertise with digital and artificial intelligence to serve the wider healthcare community and create new standards across the sector.

Introduction to Role:

The Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Operations team (ML/AI Ops) is a newly formed team of battle-tested and proven SaaS ML/AI developers and operators that will spearhead the design, creation, and operational excellence of our entire ML/AI data and computational AWS ecosystem to catalyze and accelerate science led innovations through our pharmaceutical clinical SaaS products.

This team is responsible and accountable for the design, implementation, deployment, health and performance of all algorithms, models, ML/AI operations (MLOps, AIOps, and LLMOps) and Data Science Platform. We manage ML/AI and broader cloud resources, automating operations through infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD pipelines, and ensure best-in-class operations – striving to push even beyond mere compliance with industry standards such as Good Clinical Practices (GCP) and Good Machine Learning Practice (GMLP).

On the human side of the equation, our team forges deep relationships across broader engineering, design, product and science organizations and are quintessential and consummate interdisciplinary teammates and collaborators that can build on our deep heritage within global pharmaceutical clinical trials to drive State-of-the-art (SOTA) AI product experiences with tangible and quantifiable product and business operations impact.

As an ML/AI Engineer on our team, you will design and scale innovative AI capabilities for our products and operations. Specializing in AWS Services (such as Sagemaker, Bedrock, Lex, OpenSearch, etc.) and modern AI platforms and stacks, you will utilize the latest frameworks and methodologies in Generative AI to create real business value. Your expertise in AWS cloud infrastructure, DevOps, Foundation Models (FMs), prompt engineering, RAG, and LLMOps tools like DSPy, Letta, LlamaIndex, and LangChain will be pivotal in enhancing our AI capabilities and driving innovation.

This position requires a deep understanding of cloud-native ML/AI Ops methodologies and technologies, AWS infrastructure, and the unique demands of regulated industries, making it a cornerstone of our success in delivering impactful solutions to the pharmaceutical industry.

Accountabilities:

Operational Excellence

• Lead by example in creating high-performance, mission-focused and interdisciplinary teams/culture founded on trust, mutual respect, growth mindsets, and an obsession for building extraordinary products with extraordinary people.
• Lead by example in using reactive firefighting to drive the creation of proactive capability and process enhancements that ensures enduring value creation and analytic compounding interest.
• Design and implement resilient cloud ML/AI operational capabilities to maximize our system A-bilities (Learnability, Flexibility, Extendibility, Interoperability, Scalability).
• Drive cost efficiency, optimized system performance, and risk mitigation with a data-driven strategy, analytics, and predictive capabilities for the systems we build, manage and govern.

ML/AI Cloud Operations and Engineering

• Design and scale GenAI applications using AWS Services and bleeding edge GenAI stacks and frameworks
• Ensure AI projects have principled and methodical validation pathways that adhere to our platform development lifecycle -- so we either fail fast, or get to market as efficiently and quickly as possible. 
• Maintain and teach advanced understanding of rapidly evolving frameworks such as DSPy, Letta (formerly MemGPT), LlamaIndex, LangChain, Vector DBs, RAG (and constantly evolving innovations such as Cache-Augmented Generation (CAG)) to enhance AI capabilities across engineering and science organizations.
• Apply and teach advanced prompt engineering techniques to improve AI model interactions and outputs, and evangelize “prompts as programs” philosophy and management/governance implications.
• Embed deeply within and across product, design, science and business teams to build AI capabilities that have tangible and quantifiable product and business impact.

Personal Attributes:

• Customer-obsessed and passionate about building products that solve real-world problems.
• Highly organized and detail-oriented, with the ability to manage multiple initiatives and deadlines.
• Collaborative and inclusive, fostering a positive team culture where creativity and innovation thrive.

Essential Skills/Experience:

• Minimum of 5 years in ML/AI engineering.
• HS Diploma and 8 years of experience in Engineering/IT solutions OR BA/BS Degree and 5 years of experience or equivalent capabilities.

• Proven track record of designing and implementing ML/AI end-to-end workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to identify real business and product opportunities and implement cutting-edge technologies and methodologies in production environments to drive tangible and quantifiable product and business value.
• Experience working with diverse teams to achieve product and organizational objectives through automation.
• Deep understanding of the Data Science Lifecycle (DSLC) and the ability to shepherd data science projects from inception to production within the platform architecture and development process (AWS TypeScript CDK, Argo CD, Helm, Kubernetes).
• Expertise in RAG methodologies and AWS Bedrock, Sagemaker, Lex and OpenSearch for developing AI and automation solutions.
• Expertise and vigilance of the latest GenAI frameworks and tools like DSPy, Letta, LlamaIndex, and LangChain.
• Advanced coding skills in relevant programming languages (Python/JavaScript/TypeScript) and frameworks.
• Similar CI/CD cloud operations skills as an Cloud Solutions Architect of DevOps engineer, with additional expertise in data science and ML/AI engineering.

Desirable Skills/Experience:

• 7+ years in ML/AI operations engineering roles.

Evinova draws on AstraZeneca’s deep experience developing novel therapeutics, informed by insights from thousands of patients and clinical researchers. Together, we can accelerate the delivery of life-changing medicines, improve the design and delivery of clinical trials for better patient experiences and outcomes, and think more holistically about patient care before, during and after treatment.  We know that regulators, healthcare professionals and care teams at clinical trial sites do not want a fragmented approach. They do not want a future where every pharmaceutical company provides their own, different digital solutions. They want solutions that work across the sector, simplify their workload and benefit patients broadly. By bringing our solutions to the wider healthcare community, we can help build more unified approaches to how we all develop and deploy digital technologies, better serving our teams, physicians and ultimately patients.  Evinova represents a unique opportunity to deliver meaningful outcomes with digital and AI to serve the wider healthcare community and create new standards for the sector.  Join us on our journey of building a new kind of healttech business to reset expectations of what a bio-pharmaceutical company can be. This means we’re opening new ways to work, pioneering cutting edge methods and bringing unexpected teams together. Interested? Come and join our journey.

Where can I find out more?

• Our Social Media, Follow AstraZeneca on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/1603/
• Follow AstraZeneca on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/astrazenecacareers/
• Follow AstraZeneca on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/astrazeneca_careers/?hl=en
• Learn more about Evinova www.evinova.com

Total Rewards:

The annual base pay for this position ranges from $119,628.00 to $179,442.00. Hourly and salaried non-exempt employees will also be paid overtime pay when working qualifying overtime hours. Base pay offered may vary depending on multiple individualized factors, including market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.  In addition, our positions offer a short-term incentive bonus opportunity; eligibility to participate in our equity-based long-term incentive program (salaried roles), to receive a retirement contribution (hourly roles), and commission payment eligibility (sales roles). Benefits offered included a qualified retirement program [401(k) plan]; paid vacation and holidays; paid leaves; and, health benefits including medical, prescription drug, dental, and vision coverage in accordance with the terms and conditions of the applicable plans. Additional details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment. If hired, employee will be in an “at-will position” and the Company reserves the right to modify base pay (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors. 

AstraZeneca is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion and providing a workplace that is free from discrimination. AstraZeneca is committed to accommodating persons with disabilities. Such accommodation is available on request in respect of all aspects of the recruitment, assessment and selection process and may be requested by emailing AZCHumanResources@astrazeneca.com.

#LI-Hybrid

AstraZeneca embraces diversity and equality of opportunity. We are committed to building an inclusive and diverse team representing all backgrounds, with as wide a range of perspectives as possible, and harnessing industry-leading skills. We believe that the more inclusive we are, the better our work will be. We welcome and consider applications to join our team from all qualified candidates, regardless of their characteristics. We comply with all applicable laws and regulations on non-discrimination in employment (and recruitment), as well as work authorisation and employment eligibility verification requirements.