Director, AI Ecosystem & Partnerships

THE ROLE

As Director, AI Ecosystem & Partnerships, you own the operational execution of the external partner layer of a flagship AI transformation program. The program runs seven AI-native commercial experiments simultaneously – spanning oncology, consumer, market access, medical, and commercial development – and each depends on a different combination of specialized external capabilities: diagnostic data platforms, HCP engagement tools, ambient clinical AI, consumer health apps, and commercial development infrastructure. You get pointed at a partner and own the execution end-to-end: the deal, the contracting, the integration, the performance. You build the AI-native workflows and cross-functional coordination processes that make partnership execution happen at a speed this industry has not operated at before. This is not a role you run from a distance.

WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS

Complex AI work moves only as fast as its weakest coordination point. In a portfolio of parallel experiments running on live commercial brands, the bottleneck is almost never the technology – it is the partner agreement that has not closed, the data access that has not been negotiated, the integration that no one owns. This role removes those blockers before they show up on a program dashboard.

When the same partner appears across three experiments simultaneously – as several key platforms do in this portfolio – someone has to own the relationship at the program level, not just inside each experiment in isolation. You create the external access infrastructure every mission team depends on but cannot build themselves. What you build becomes the commercial AI partnerships template for the organization.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

You are an operational builder who moves fast and invents new process when the old one is not good enough. You have executed complex external partnerships in a healthcare or life sciences context – with real commercial urgency, real legal and compliance complexity, and real accountability for delivery against terms. You are AI-fluent enough to build workflows, tools, and coordination processes yourself – not just direct others to do it. You understand how AI data and platform vendors operate, what they need to close quickly, and how to drive a contract through Legal under time pressure. Speed is not a constraint you work around. It is how you work.

WHAT YOU WILL ACHIEVE

1) AI-Native Execution –Build the tools, workflows, and cross-functional coordination processes that make partnership execution happen at a speed that does not exist in the current model. Partnerships in this program are measured in days, not months – and the processes to close them that fast do not exist yet. You invent them. You are an AI builder: you use agents, automation, and AI-native tooling to compress the time from first partner conversation to signed agreement to integrated capability. When the process is the bottleneck, you fix the process.

2) Partner Development & Contracting –Source, evaluate, and bring to term every external partnership the program requires. Own the full arc – initial outreach through scoping through legal and procurement through signed agreement. Coordinate with Legal, Finance, Compliance, and IT to clear the contracting path at pace. You are not the contract reviewer; you are the person who moves it forward.

3) Deal Events & Evaluation Processes –Design and run structured partner evaluation events – pitch days, proof-of-concept sprints, capability demonstrations – to give mission teams real signal on partners before commitments are made. Own the criteria, the process, the scoring, and the go/no-go recommendation to mission leadership. When the program needs to make a partnership call under time pressure, you have already done the work to make it a clean decision.

4) Cross-Mission Coordination –When the same partner appears in multiple experiments simultaneously – as several key platforms do across this portfolio – you own the relationship at the program level and coordinate mission-level terms. Prevent duplicate outreach, inconsistent commitments, or conflicting asks that erode negotiating position. Maintain a single source of truth on every active partner across all seven experiments.

5) Partner Health & Performance –Once agreements are live, hold partners accountable. Track delivery against committed terms, data quality, integration timelines, a…