Associate Director, Data Scientist

At Gilead, we’re creating a healthier world for all people. For more than 35 years, we’ve tackled diseases such as HIV, viral hepatitis, COVID-19 and cancer – working relentlessly to develop therapies that help improve lives and to ensure access to these therapies across the globe. We continue to fight against the world’s biggest health challenges, and our mission requires collaboration, determination and a relentless drive to make a difference. Every member of Gilead’s team plays a critical role in the discovery and development of life-changing scientific innovations. Our employees are our greatest asset as we work to achieve our bold ambitions, and we’re looking for the next wave of passionate and ambitious people ready to make a direct impact. We believe every employee deserves a great leader. People Leaders are the cornerstone to the employee experience at Gilead and Kite. As a people leader now or in the future, you are the key driver in evolving our culture and creating an environment where every employee feels included, developed and empowered to fulfil their aspirations. Join Gilead and help create possible, together. Job Description The AI Research Center advances Gilead's mission by developing and applying Artificial Intelligence technologies that accelerate scientific discovery, drug development, and enterprise innovation. As part of Clinical Data Science, the AI Research Center serves as a center of excellence for responsible AI adoption across Research, Development, Clinical Operations, Regulatory, Safety, and enterprise business functions. This role sits within AIx Operations and works closely with ARC product, translational AI, governance, and delivery teams, along with partners across the Development organization. The role will be part of a team that manages contractors and technical delivery partners while remaining hands-on with the technical work. The role helps guide AI researchers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and contractors responsible for designing, developing, implementing, evaluating, and scaling AI-driven solutions. It requires the ability to move comfortably between product thinking, architecture, code, experimentation, contractor oversight, and production delivery. The role brings a strong product mindset to AI innovation. Success is measured not only by technical innovation, but by trusted AI capabilities that are adopted by scientists and business partners and generate measurable impact. This role is located in Foster City, CA. Responsibilities: AI Operations, Contractor Delivery & Hands-On Technical Work • Works as part of a team responsible for managing contractors, technical delivery partners, and AI workstreams across applied AI initiatives. • Supports contractor onboarding, work planning, technical direction, delivery coordination, quality review, and accountability for assigned work. • Provides hands-on technical direction for AI prototypes, model development, application patterns, data pipelines, and production AI systems. • Reviews technical designs, architecture decisions, model evaluation plans, code quality, implementation tradeoffs, and production-readiness. • Contributes to prototypes, proof-of-concepts, notebooks, design documents, technical spikes, and code reviews when needed. • Promotes scientific rigor, reproducibility, engineering excellence, responsible AI practices, documentation, and maintainable delivery patterns. AI Research, Applied Innovation & Product Value • Leads development, evaluation, deployment, and scaling of AI capabilities supporting research, development, clinical, regulatory, safety, and enterprise use cases. • Applies product thinking to ensure AI solutions address clear user needs, workflow realities, business priorities, adoption goals, and measurable outcomes. • Partners with Product Management & Experiences to understand user needs, prioritize opportunities, define success metrics, and support adoption. • Uses experimentation, user feedback, benchmarking, and iterative delivery to validate assumptions and improve AI capabilities over time. • Identifies opportunities to use emerging AI technologies to accelerate scientific discovery and operational effectiveness. • Uses experimentation, user feedback, benchmarking, and iterative delivery to validate assumptions and improve AI capabilities over time. • Identifies opportunities to use emerging AI technologies to accelerate scientific discovery and operational effectiveness. Technical Architecture & Engineering Excellence • Designs and guides AI solution architectures for assigned projects and business domains. • Guides development of Retrieval-Augmented Generation systems, agentic workflows, prompt and context engineering patterns, evaluation harnesses, model monitoring, and Langfuse-based observability. • Sets expectations for production-quality code, automated testing, version control, reproducible experiments, scalable deployment patterns, and operational documentation. • Develops reusable AI frameworks, tools, accelerators, platforms, and services that enable faster delivery across Research, Development, and enterprise functions. • Helps troubleshoot complex issues across data quality, model behavior, latency, reliability, security, scalability, cost, compliance, and user experience. • Responsible AI, Governance & Production Operations • Ensures AI solutions follow applicable governance, privacy, security, regulatory, and responsible AI expectations. • Implements practical approaches for Large Language Model evaluation, groundedness assessment, hallucination risk management, traceability, and quality measurement. • Uses platforms such as Langfuse or equivalent approved tooling for LLM tracing, debugging, prompt and response analysis, observability, evaluation workflows, and production monitoring. • Supports Machine Learning Operations, Large Language Model Operations, continuous integration and delivery, model monitoring, observabil