Senior Director, AI Commercial Business Partner Astrazeneca Pharma India Ltd.

What you ll do:

AI Commercial Business Leaders are the embedded translators between business functions and the AI Commercial organization, responsible for the success of AI programs. The role is strategically positioned in therapy areas, markets, and functions with the objectives to drive translation, adoption, and lifecycle management of AI solutions in the business.

Key deliverables include translating business needs into well-scoped AI use cases and ensure each solution delivers measurable business impact. This requires you to be bilingual in business/science and technology, enabling you to connect domain priorities with AI delivery teams. You will be responsible for owning the full lifecycle of AI solutions - from ideation through delivery, adoption, and decommissioning - and are accountable for driving real, sustained value and reuse.

In this role, you will be responsible for building the bridge between business teams at a Region and Market level, and technical experts within the AIC and EAI function as well as key other Enterprise technology teams such as Commercial IT and Global Business Services. As part of this role, you will champion the key commercial AI programs in service of enhancing customer engagement, powered by actionable AI insights, delivered thought agentic platforms. In addition, you will partner on the delivery of AI capability building programs.

To do this successfully, you will share geographic location with the respective Region team, have a seat at the Senior leader table for the Region, with connection further enhanced through dotted line reporting to the Region, while sitting on the AIC Leadership team reporting to VP AIC.

The International region is the largest, most diverse and fastest growing region in AstraZeneca. It has over 28,000 employees across more than 75 markets, spanning many different cultures and languages. Areas it includes are: Middle East & Africa, South America, Asia and Australasia.

Responsibilities include:

• Strategy and portfolio ownership of new AI Commercial programs for in partnership with the business teams.
• Single point of contact and responsible for engagement for AI Commercial capabilities programs for the Region, maintaining AI roadmaps aligned with business needs, developing business cases in partnership with the business, and promoting reuse principles.
• Translation of needs into AI use cases: Engaging with stakeholders to identify unmet needs and translating these into well-defined AI use cases with clear metrics and requirements and a clear alignment with business strategy and AI30 focus areas.
• Delivery, scale, adoption and value tracking of AI initiatives: co-leading solution delivery, overseeing lifecycle management including pilot shaping, deployment, adoption, and value realization, while ensuring appropriate evidence frameworks are applied.
• Change management and governance: Acting as change leaders embedding AI into operations, support AI literacy, and ensure data governance and compliance with standards and regulations, while collaborating with internal and external partners to drive commercial success at scale.
• Translating business needs into well-scoped AI use cases and ensuring each solution delivers measurable business impact. This requires you to be bilingual in business and technology, enabling you to connect domain priorities with AI delivery teams. Owning the full lifecycle of AI solutions - from ideation through delivery, adoption, and decommissioning.
• Spot and shape new enterprise initiatives by scanning internal/external trends and partnering with functional leaders.
• Track industry, market and innovation shifts to anticipate opportunities and risks.
• Lead change through structured stakeholder engagement, aligning perspectives and guiding teams through uncertainty.
• Define KPIs and monitoring to evaluate progress and pivot when needed.

Typical Accountabilities include:

• AI Strategy and portfolio ownership
  • Serve as the single business owner for AI solutions in their therapy area, market, or function.
  • Maintain and sequence a clear AI roadmap aligned to business, medical, access, and R&D priorities.
  • Develop business cases and value narratives to support prioritization decisions.
  • Embed reuse principles ("build or buy once, scale to many") when defining and shaping demand.
• Translation of needs into AI use cases
  • Engage business leaders and cross-functional teams to surface unmet needs and decision points where AI can drive new outcomes.
  • Translate needs into well-scoped AI use cases with clear problem statements, success metrics, data requirements, and risk tiering.
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Essential for the Role:

• Substantial proven experience leading transformation programs in commercial pharma.
• Demonstrated commercial and scientific domain experience reflecting a deep understanding of the needs of the business function and Region you are responsible for.
• Strong analytical and communication skills at all levels of the organization and the ability to operate successfully in highly matrixed organizations
• Effective interpersonal and relationship management skills with consultative approach and ability to interact and build trust
• Operational effectiveness, highly organized process with follow through
• Strong initiative to understand our core business goals and establish processes or programs to set direction, generate alignment and push forward
• Financial background and understanding of forecasts, budgets, financial activities and tools
• Resourceful, motivated, influential and proactive; able to prioritize in a fast-growing organization
• Experience in strategic planning processes and tools and/or project management tools

Desirable for the Role

• Graduate degree (MBA, Masters, MD or PhD preferred)
• Experience in leading and managing alliances or strategic partnerships
• Experience in translating business needs into a coordinated business proposal and plan for cross-functional senior leadership team
• Ability to develop creative and simple solutions to complex problems