Drug Substance Division (DSD) AI Lead (Remote – EST)

Drug Substance Division (DSD) AI Lead (Remote – EST)

We are looking to hire a candidate with the skills sets mentioned and experience for one of our clients within the pharmaceutical Industry. This is a 6+ month contracting role, with potential for extension. This is a Remote role, with a preference for candidates in the EST zone to facilitate coordination with teams across EST, PST, and EU time zones.

Role Summary:

You are the AI forward-deployed engineer for Drug Substance Division (DSD) operations within Thermo Fisher's Pharma Services Group. Your mission is to identify where AI can materially improve day-to-day work, then build and ship solutions that teams actually use. You deliver hands-on with AWS, Databricks, Dataiku, and OpenAI, and you drive ChatGPT adoption across DSD workflows.

You must hold two truths at once: the business needs near-term outcomes, while IT continues building medium/long-term data and AI foundations (for example: MCP server patterns, A2A approaches, reusable agent frameworks, governance and scalable integrations). You create a clear vision that connects immediate wins to scalable, supportable capabilities.

Key Responsibilities:

Identify high-leverage DSD use cases: Target opportunities across DS operations (technical knowledge retrieval, investigation support, documentation acceleration, operational insights, exception triage, capacity/coordination decision support).

Build prototypes and deliver MVPs: Create working solutions using AWS/Databricks/Dataiku/OpenAI, integrating operational data and documents into usable workflows.

Data readiness and integration: Assess data availability/quality; define what's needed and influence how to get there (standard sources, access patterns, reusable pipelines).

Roadmap ownership: Produce a DSD capability roadmap with milestones, dependencies, and impact metrics.

Balance quick wins vs foundations: Deliver what helps DSD now while shaping patterns that will scale as the enterprise platform matures (reusable assets, integration standards, evaluation/monitoring, agent orchestration approaches).

Vision and transition plan: Define the DSD AI north star and a staged path from POCs to reusable capabilities to scaled delivery.

Drive ChatGPT adoption: Build prompt libraries, playbooks, and training tied to real DS work; measure usage and outcomes.

Stay current and apply responsibly: Keep pace with AI advances and translate them into practical, controlled, high-impact solutions suitable for DSD environments.

Required Skills/Qualifications:

Domain fluency in drug substance operations and how DS work is executed (process understanding, technical documentation, investigations interfaces, performance drivers).

Primary Stack: AWS, Dataiku, Databricks, and OpenAI.

Strong hands-on delivery skills: Python/SQL plus AWS and Databricks and/or Dataiku experience; applied use of OpenAI.

Applied GenAI/LLM experience (RAG, evaluation, guardrails, workflow integration, adoption enablement).

Strong ChatGPT adoption in DSD workflows.

Ability to work independently, drive ambiguity to shipped outcomes, and communicate clearly to senior stakeholders.

Proven ability to balance immediate impact with long-term scalability while platform capabilities evolve.

Practical GxP awareness and experience operating with controlled documents/data access.

Experience working across distributed/global DS operations.

Other Job Details:

Job Type: C2C or W2.

Duration: 6 – 12 months with high possibility of extension.

Location: Remote (preferred candidates in the EST zone to facilitate coordination with teams across EST, PST, and EU time zones).

Pay Rate:
$70/hr. on C2C. or $62/hr. on W2.

Interviews: Video interviews.

Docs required: ID proof will be required.