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About This Role
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We are the people who give possibilities purpose
BD is one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world. Advancing the world of health™ is our Purpose, and it’s no small feat. It takes the imagination and passion of all of us—from design and engineering to the manufacturing and marketing of our billions of MedTech products per year—to look at the impossible and find transformative solutions that turn dreams into possibilities.
Job Description
Senior Director, AI, Automation & Analytics
Position Summary
The Senior Director, AI, Automation & Analytics will lead the Global Business Services (GBS) digital transformation strategy, driving the adoption and scaling of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI (GenAI), intelligent automation, analytics, process mining, and digital solutions across the enterprise. This leader will identify and deliver technology-enabled opportunities that improve operational efficiency, elevate employee and customer experiences, and generate measurable business value across global service lines.
Partnering closely with Global Process Owners, IT, Functional Leaders, Delivery Teams, and Responsible AI governance bodies, the Senior Director will develop and execute a portfolio of transformative initiatives supporting Hire-to-Retire, Source-to-Pay, Quote-to-Cash, Master Data Management, and other core business processes. The role is accountable for advancing the organization's digital agenda while delivering approximately $25 million in productivity improvements over a three-year period.
This position leads a global organization through two Director-level leaders responsible for Analytics and Digital Solutions and serves as a key strategic partner in shaping the future of GBS operations.
Scope
Capability Ownership
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI (GenAI)
- Intelligent Automation and Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)
- Process Mining and Process Intelligence
- Business-Facing Analytics and Insights
- Digital Products and Workflow Solutions
- Citizen Development Governance
- Digital Adoption and Value Realization
Global Reach
Supports global GBS functions including:
- Hire-to-Retire (H2R)
- Source-to-Pay (S2P)
- Quote-to-Cash (Q2C)
- Master Data Management (MDM)
- Additional enterprise service lines
Delivery Model
Enables and supports both captive and outsourced/BPO operations globally.
Technology Environment
Delivers solutions on approved enterprise platforms while complying with IT architecture, cybersecurity, data governance, privacy, and Responsible AI standards.
Leadership Responsibility
Leads a global team of highly skilled AI, automation, analytics, and digital professionals through two Director-level leaders.
Key Interfaces
Partners extensively with:
- Global Process Owners
- IT and Enterprise Architecture
- Functional Leadership Teams
- Responsible AI Governance Committees
- External Technology Partners
- GBS Operations and Delivery Teams
Key Responsibilities
AI, GenAI & Intelligent Automation Strategy
- Define and execute the GBS AI, automation, and analytics strategy aligned with business objectives and transformation priorities.
- Identify and scale high-impact AI and GenAI use cases that improve productivity, decision quality, customer experience, and operational performance.
- Drive enterprise adoption of intelligent automation capabilities, including RPA, workflow automation, and Intelligent Document Processing solutions.
- Establish standards and best practices that enable scalable, reusable, and sustainable digital solutions.
Digital Transformation & Portfolio Management
- Own the portfolio of AI, automation, analytics, and digital transformation initiatives across GBS.
- Prioritize opportunities based on business value, strategic impact, scalability, feasibility, and adoption potential.
- Partner with business stakeholders to translate operational challenges into technology-enabled solutions.
Analytics & Process Intelligence
- Lead the delivery of analytics, reporting, and business insights that support operational performance and strategic decision-making.
- Utilize process mining and advanced analytics to identify inefficiencies, process variation, automation opportunities, and improvement priorities.
- Partner with Global Process Owners to drive continuous improvement and increase straight-through processing across service lines.
Digital Product Leadership
- Oversee digital product strategy, roadmaps, backlogs, and release prioritization.
- Lead agile teams through solution design, development, implementation, and value realization.
- Ensure solutions are designed with a strong focus on user experience, business outcomes, and long-term scalability.
Governance, Adoption & Value Realization
- Ensure all AI and automation solutions operate within established governance, security, privacy, and Responsible AI frameworks.
- Establish governance and operating models for citizen development and low-code platforms.
- Drive organizational adoption through effective stakeholder engagement, training, and change management.
- Measure and communicate productivity gains, quality improvements, operational efficiencies, and business value realization.
Leadership & Stakeholder Management
- Lead, develop, and mentor a high-performing global team of AI, automation, analytics, and digital professionals.
- Build strong partnerships across IT, operations, functional leadership, and external vendors.
- Influence senior stakeholders across a complex, matrixed global organization to accelerate transformation initiatives and achieve business outcomes.
Qualifications
Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Analytics, Business, or a related field.
- 12+ years of progressive experience leading AI, automation, analytics, digital transformation, or operational excellence initiatives.
- 5+ years of leadership experience managing global teams and complex transformation programs.
- Demonstrated success deploying AI/GenAI, intelligent automation, process mining, and analytics solutions at scale.
- Experience operating within Global Business Services, Shared Services, Global Capability Centers, or similarly complex global organizations.
- Proven track record delivering measurable business outcomes and productivity improvements through technology-enabled transformation.
- Strong executive presence with the ability to influence across business, operations, and technology organizations.
- Experience leading large-scale change initiatives in a highly matrixed environment.
Preferred
- Advanced degree (MBA, Master's, or equivalent) preferred.
- Experience within healthcare, life sciences, pharmaceutical, or other highly regulated industries.
- Experience with leading platforms such as: UiPath Automation Anywhere Microsoft Power Platform Celonis Power BI Tableau Enterprise AI/LLM ecosystems
- Experience supporting both captive and outsourced/BPO operating models.
- Relevant certifications in AI, cloud technologies, intelligent automation, agile methodologies, product management, or data analytics.
At BD, we are committed to supporting our associates’ well-being, development, and success through a performance-based culture. For this position, BD offers a competitive compensation package along with the following benefits specific to this role:
- Annual Bonus
- Standard LTI
Health and Well-being Benefits
- Medical coverage
- Health Savings Accounts
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- Dental coverage
- Vision coverage
- Hospital Care Insurance
- Critical Illness Insurance
- Accidental Injury Insurance
- Life and AD&D insurance
- Short-term disability coverage
- Long-term disability insurance
- Long-term care with life insurance
Other Well-being Resources
- Anxiety management program
- Wellness incentives
- Sleep improvement program
- Diabetes management program
- Virtual physical therapy
- Emotional/mental health support programs
- Weight management programs
- Gastrointestinal health program
- Substance use management program
- Musculoskeletal surgery, cancer treatment, and bariatric surgery benefit
Retirement and Financial Well-being
- BD 401(k) Plan
- BD Deferred Compensation and Restoration Plan
- 529 College Savings Plan
- Financial counseling
- Baxter Credit Union (BCU)
- Daily Pay
- College financial aid and application guidance
Life Balance Programs
- Paid time off (PTO), including all required State leaves
- Educational assistance/tuition reimbursement
- MetLife Legal Plan
- Group auto and home insurance
- Pet insurance
- Commuter benefits
- Discounts on products and services
- Academic Achievement Scholarship
- Service Recognition Awards
- Employer matching donation
- Workplace accommodations
Other Life Balance Programs
- Adoption assistance
- Backup day care and eldercare
- Support for neurodivergent adults, children, and caregivers
- Caregiving assistance for elderly and special needs individuals
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Paid Parental Leave
- Support for fertility, birthing, postpartum, and age-related hormonal changes
Leave Programs
- Bereavement leaves
- Military leave
- Personal leave
- Family and Medical Leave (FML)
- Jury and Witness Duty Leave
Why Join Us?
To find purpose in the possibilities, we need people who can see the bigger picture, who understand the human story that underpins everything we do. We welcome people with the imagination and drive to help us reinvent the future of healthcare. At BD, you’ll discover a culture in which you can learn, grow and thrive.
We believe that when people connect in person, we learn faster, collaborate more deeply, and build a stronger culture. Join us and enjoy a culture where face-to-face collaboration supports your learning, your progress, and your success.
To learn more about BD visit https://bd.com/careers(opens in new window).
Becton, Dickinson, and Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We evaluate applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, marital or domestic or civil union status, familial status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetics, disability, military eligibility or veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.
Why Join Us?
To find purpose in the possibilities, we need people who can see the bigger picture, who understand the human story that underpins everything we do. We welcome people with the imagination and drive to help us reinvent the future of healthcare. At BD, you’ll discover a culture in which you can learn, grow and thrive.
We believe that when people connect in person, we learn faster, collaborate more deeply, and build a stronger culture. Join us and enjoy a culture where face-to-face collaboration supports your learning, your progress, and your success.
To learn more about BD visit https://bd.com/careers.
Becton, Dickinson, and Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We evaluate applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, marital or domestic or civil union status, familial status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetics, disability, military eligibility or veteran status, and other legally protected characteristics.
Required Skills
Optional Skills
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Primary Work Location
USA NJ - Franklin Lakes Additional Locations
Work Shift
At BD, we reward, support and develop our associates through our comprehensive Total Rewards program. We are committed to attracting and retaining high quality talent by providing reward and recognition opportunities that promote a performance-based culture, as well as a competitive package of compensation and benefits programs. You can learn more on our career site under "Our Commitment to You."
Our salary or hourly rate ranges reward associates fairly and competitively. We regularly review these ranges and factors, such as location, contribute to the range displayed.
Our pay is based on the role and the necessary skills and education to perform it successfully. The salary or hourly rate offered is determined by the role's specific requirements, including any applicable step rate pay system at the work location. Salary or hourly pay ranges are influenced by labor laws and Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) requirements applicable to the work location which may also affect the workplace arrangement of the role.
Salary Range Information
$230,300.00 - $368,500.00 USD Annual
Salary Context
This $230K-$368K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 1623 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 9,079 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At BD, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $211,950 based on 13,048 positions with disclosed compensation. Director-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $272,300. This role's midpoint ($299K) sits 41% above the category median. Disclosed range: $230K to $368K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($256,000) and Research Engineer ($252,000). By seniority level: Entry: $111,000; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $229,300; Director: $272,300; VP: $235,830.
BD AI Hiring
BD has 2 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span Franklin Lakes, NJ, US, Laguna Canyon, CA, US. Compensation range: $258K - $368K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (531 positions) offer remote work, while 8,478 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (3,078 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,646 roles, $261,000 median); Los Angeles (1,486 roles, $210,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 9,079 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 106 entry-level, 4,384 mid-level, 3,343 senior, and 1,246 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (531 positions). The remaining 8,478 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $263,911. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($256,000 median, 66 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 457 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($251,622 median, 55 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 9,079 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (6,862), AI Product Manager (453), AI Software Engineer (451). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (106) are outnumbered by mid-level (4,384) and senior (3,343) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,246 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (531 positions), with 8,478 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,000. Top-quartile roles start at $263,911, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $256,000 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $141,440. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (1,649 postings), Aws (898 postings), Azure (723 postings), Rag (671 postings), Gcp (536 postings), Pytorch (434 postings), Claude (410 postings), Kubernetes (406 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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