Position Title: Assoc. Dir. DDIT DEV DATA ANALYTICS DSAI (Data Science and AI)

Location – Hyd-India #LI Hybrid

About the Role

We are seeking an AI Operations Lead to oversee the smooth delivery, support, and continuous improvement of AI/ML and GenAI services and solutions across the Durg Development. This role is responsible for establishing scalable operating models, ensuring service reliability, managing risks, and driving adoption of AI platforms and applications.

The ideal candidate combines deep knowledge of IT service management (ITSM) with experience in AI/ML/ Gen AI / Automation lifecycle operations, ensuring that AI services are compliant, efficient, and aligned with business outcomes.

Your responsibilities include but are not limited to

• Service Operations & Delivery Lead day-to-day operations of AI/ML and Generative AI services, ensuring availability, reliability, and performance. Establish and manage Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Operational Level Agreements (OLAs), and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for AI services.
• Oversee incident, problem, and change management processes for AI platforms and applications. Ensure operational readiness for AI models post-deployment, including monitoring, retraining, and lifecycle management (MLOps).
• Governance & Compliance Define and enforce AI service policies, standards, and compliance with regulatory/ethical AI guidelines. Partner with security, risk, and compliance teams to manage AI model governance and data privacy. Ensure audit readiness and documentation for AI operations.

• Continuous Improvement & Innovation Identify opportunities to optimize AI service operations through automation, monitoring, and proactive support. Drive adoption of AI observability tools for monitoring model performance, drift, and bias.
• Champion best practices in incident response, model retraining, and service reliability engineering. Collaborate with product and engineering teams to improve AI service design and scalability.

• Stakeholder Management & Collaboration Act as the primary point of contact for business stakeholders regarding AI service performance and issues. Communicate operational health, risks, and improvements to leadership.
• Partner with AI product owners, data scientists, engineers, and IT to align services with business priorities. Support change management and user adoption of AI-driven services.

• Team Leadership Lead and mentor a team of AI service operations specialists/engineers. Build operational expertise in AI support and monitoring across the team. Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous learning.

 What you’ll bring to the role:

• Strong understanding of AI/ML lifecycle management, MLOps, and Generative AI services.
• Proficiency with ITSM tools (ServiceNow, Jira Service Management) and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP). Knowledge of monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, MLflow, Evidently AI).
• Familiarity with responsible AI practices (fairness, bias detection, explainability).
• Excellent problem-solving, incident management, and stakeholder engagement skills. Soft Skills: Strong communicator, collaborative leader, adaptable, and results-driven.

Desirable Requirements:

• Bachelor's or master’s degree in computer science | University degree | , Data Science, IT, or related field. ITIL or AI/ML / LLM operations certifications are a plus
• Experience: 8–12 years in IT service operations or production support, with at least 3+ years in AI/ML or cloud-based service operations.

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Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

Novartis embraces diversity, equal opportunity, and inclusion. We are committed to building diverse teams, representative of the patients and communities we serve, and we strive to create an inclusive workplace that cultivates bold innovation through collaboration and empowers our people to unleash their full potential.