Director, Data & AI Platforms

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe health is everything. Our strength in healthcare innovation empowers us to build a world where complex diseases are prevented, treated, and cured, where treatments are smarter and less invasive, and solutions are personal. Through our expertise in Innovative Medicine and MedTech, we are uniquely positioned to innovate across the full spectrum of healthcare solutions today to deliver the breakthroughs of tomorrow, and profoundly impact health for humanity. Learn more at jnj.com

As guided by Our Credo, Johnson & Johnson is responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We provide an inclusive work environment where each person is considered as an individual. At Johnson & Johnson, we respect the diversity and dignity of our employees and recognize their merit.

Job Function:

Technology Product & Platform Management

Job Sub Function:

Platform/Cloud Engineering

Job Category:

People Leader

All Job Posting Locations:

Raritan, New Jersey, United States of America

Job Description:

We are currently recruiting for a Director role for our DePuy Synthes organization. This role is based in Raritan, NJ on a hybrid work model.

Johnson & Johnson announced plans to separate our Orthopaedics business to establish a standalone orthopaedics company, operating as DePuy Synthes. The process of the planned separation is anticipated to be completed within 18 to 24 months, subject to legal requirements, including consultation with works councils and other employee representative bodies, as may be required, regulatory approvals and other customary conditions and approvals. Should you accept this position, it is anticipated that, following conclusion of the transaction, you would be an employee of DePuy Synthes and your employment would be governed by DePuy Synthes employment processes, programs, policies, and benefit plans. In that case, details of any planned changes would be provided to you by DePuy Synthes at an appropriate time and subject to any necessary consultation processes."

 

Why this matters

This role represents a rare opportunity to build the data and AI platforms of a newly standalone company. You will keep the business running through separation, exit transition services from Johnson & Johnson, and consolidate a fragmented estate of regional data lakes, ingestion frameworks, catalogs, MDM and BI tools into one governed, AI-ready platform on AWS and Databricks. The platforms you build will be the foundation for analytics, AI and agentic solutions across every business function.

What you'll do

DePuy Synthes is seeking a Director, Data & AI Platforms to join the Data & AI Architecture & Platforms team, reporting to the Sr. Director, Enterprise Data & AI Architect. You will own the Data & AI Platforms tower and lead four platform teams: Core Data Platform & Integration, Data & BI Platforms, AI Runtime & Serving, and Platform Reliability & DevEx. You will also direct the corresponding GCC engineering pods in Bengaluru on a dotted-line basis, in partnership with GCC leadership.

This is a leadership role for someone who has built and run data and AI platforms firsthand. You will need enough hands-on depth to understand the complexity of this space, keep pace as it evolves, and make grounded technical decisions.

How you'll make an impact

Platform Strategy & Ownership

• Own the strategy, roadmap, budget and run of the enterprise Data & AI platforms on AWS and Databricks.

• Turn target-state architecture and standards into platform services that domain, data science and delivery teams can consume through self-service.

• Keep the business running through separation by standing up and stabilizing cloned and transitional platforms while the target state is built.

• Plan and deliver TSA exits from Johnson & Johnson platforms on time and within budget, landing directly on the target platform rather than migrating twice.

• Consolidate regional and functional data lakes, ingestion frameworks and BI tools onto one governed lakehouse, and partner with MDM & Data Governance to consolidate MDM and catalog tooling.

Core Data Platform & Integration (hands-on until backfilled)

• Lead ingestion and streaming (e.g., Fivetran, SAP Business Data Cloud, Amazon MSK, Lakeflow Declarative Pipelines), lakehouse and medallion design, orchestration and API integration.

• Set engineering patterns for data quality, lineage, data contracts and cost-efficient processing.

• Manage cyclic and multi-hop dependencies between legacy, transitional and target-state pipelines so that downstream consumers stay stable through cutover.

Data & BI, AI Runtime & Reliability

• Data & BI Platforms: governed semantic layer and metrics, BI platforms (Power BI, Tableau, Databricks AI/BI), data products and marketplace, and unstructured data.

• AI Runtime & Serving: agentic runtime, model serving and gateway, retrieval and context services, model and prompt lifecycle, and evaluation tooling (e.g., Databricks Mosaic AI, Amazon Bedrock and AgentCore).

• Platform Reliability & DevEx: DevSecOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure-as-Code, internal developer platform, observability, SLOs and run, and FinOps.

• Enforce identity, guardrails and release criteria defined by the Architecture Standards & Responsible AI function, including GxP and non-GxP separation.

Architecture & Executive Leadership

• Serve as a standing member of the Architecture Review Board and deputize for the Sr. Director in architecture, CDAO and CIO forums.

• Partner with Data Science, MDM & Data Governance, business-facing leaders and GCC leadership to sequence platform capabilities against business priorities.

• Present platform status, risks, financials and decisions to senior leadership in a concise, decision-ready way.

Team Leadership & Operating Model

• Build, lead and develop platform managers and engineers across US and GCC teams, including hiring, goal setting and career development.

• Direct GCC pods (Data Engineering & BI, AI Engineering, Reliability & DevEx) through practice leads, with clear priorities and quality standards.

• Run the tower with product discipline: service catalog, SLAs, adoption metrics and unit cost.

• Make sure no role is single-threaded, with named successors and cross-paired coverage across platform leads.

• Manage key platform vendors and partners, including commercial terms, consumption and performance.

Impact Measures

• TSA exit milestones met on time and within budget.

• Platform adoption, and number of tools and platforms retired.

• Reliability (SLO attainment) and incident reduction.

• Run cost and unit cost trends.

• Delivery speed for data products and AI solutions.

• Time from AI idea to production, enabled by reusable platform services (model gateway, retrieval, evaluation, guardrails).

• Number of AI and agentic use cases running in production on the platform, and the business value they deliver.

• Speed of adopting new AI capabilities (models, tools, patterns) safely, from evaluation to general availability.

Skills Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical field.

• 15+ years in data engineering, data platforms or cloud engineering, including 7+ years leading platform engineering teams and experience leading managers.

• Proven delivery of enterprise lakehouse platforms on Databricks and AWS (e.g., S3, Glue, MSK, IAM, Lake Formation), including Unity Catalog.

• Hands-on depth in Spark, SQL, Python, streaming, orchestration (e.g., Airflow, Databricks Workflows) and data modeling, with the ability to review designs and code.

• Experience running production AI/ML platforms, including model serving, RAG/retrieval, LLMOps/MLOps and evaluation.

• Strong DevSecOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g., Terraform) and SRE practices, including FinOps.

• Track record of consolidating or migrating legacy platforms at scale with measurable cost and reliability gains.

• Experience leading distributed and offshore teams, and managing platform budgets and vendors.

• Demonstrated ability to communicate with and influence VP and C-level stakeholders.

Preferred:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field.

• Experience in medical device, life sciences or another regulated industry (GxP, CSV/CSA, 21 CFR Part 11, data privacy).

• Experience with separations, divestitures or TSA exits.

• Experience with semantic layers, data products and data marketplaces.

• Experience with agentic AI platforms (e.g., Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, MCP).

• Databricks, AWS or Kubernetes certifications.

Other:

• Travel: Up to 10%.

• Language: English proficiency required.

Required Skills:

 

 

Preferred Skills:

Accessible Design, Agility Jumps, Business Alignment, Cloud Computing, Cloud Migrations, Cloud Security, Developing Others, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Hybrid Clouds, Inclusive Leadership, Leadership, Multi Cloud Models, Program Management, Risk Management, Software Development Management, Succession Planning, Tactical Planning

 

 

The anticipated base pay range for this position is :

$168,000.00 - $290,950.00

Additional Description for Pay Transparency:

Subject to the terms of their respective plans, employees are eligible to participate in the Company’s consolidated retirement plan (pension) and savings plan (401(k)).

This position is eligible to participate in the Company’s long-term incentive program.

Subject to the terms of their respective policies and date of hire, employees are eligible for the following time off benefits:

Vacation –120 hours per calendar year

Sick time - 40 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Colorado –48 hours per calendar year; for employees who reside in the State of Washington –56 hours per calendar year

Holiday pay, including Floating Holidays –13 days per calendar year

Work, Personal and Family Time - up to 40 hours per calendar year

Parental Leave – 480 hours within one year of the birth/adoption/foster care of a child

Bereavement Leave – 240 hours for an immediate family member: 40 hours for an extended family member per calendar year

Caregiver Leave – 80 hours in a 52-week rolling period10 days

Volunteer Leave – 32 hours per calendar year

Military Spouse Time-Off – 80 hours per calendar year

 

 

For additional general information on Company benefits, please go to: