Director, AI Engineering

MSD • Rahway, NJ

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Director, Cyber AI Engineering is a senior technical leader responsible for architecting and delivering production-grade AI systems that power autonomous cyber defense and enterprise security automation. Reporting to the Director of Cyber AI & Automation, this role leads the design and implementation of scalable AI decision engines, behavioral analytics systems, and agent-based automation integrated directly into enterprise security platforms. This is a hands-on technical leadership role. The Director will design systems, guide engineering execution, and ensure AI capabilities are production-ready, governed, and safely integrated into enforcement workflows.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in AI engineering, data science systems, or large-scale analytics platforms.
• Proven experience architecting and deploying production AI systems.
• Strong expertise in Python and distributed data systems.
• Experience designing high-scale data pipelines and cloud-native architectures.
• Deep understanding of anomaly detection, behavioral modeling, or dynamic risk scoring.
• Experience leading technical teams and complex system integration efforts.
• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline (MS required; PhD strongly preferred).

Nice To Haves

• Experience in cybersecurity analytics or cyber risk platforms.
• Experience with Microsoft Defender XDR, Sentinel, or similar enterprise security platforms.
• Experience integrating AI outputs into automated enforcement systems.
• Background in systems engineering, operations research, or large-scale network analytics.
• Experience operating in regulated or mission-critical environments.

Responsibilities

• AI Systems Architecture Design scalable AI architectures capable of ingesting and reasoning over high-volume enterprise telemetry.
• Lead engineering of behavioral analytics, anomaly detection, and risk scoring models.
• Define technical patterns for AI integration into enforcement platforms.
• Autonomous Decisioning & Enforcement Integration Architect AI decision engines that drive conditional actions (e.g., isolation logic, adaptive controls, escalation workflows).
• Ensure safe deployment through guardrails, kill switches, rollback mechanisms, and critical system protections.
• Collaborate with Platform Engineering to operationalize AI outputs in Defender XDR, Sentinel, and related systems.
• Advanced Data & Model Engineering Guide large-scale data fusion across identity, endpoint, cloud, and threat intelligence telemetry.
• Establish model evaluation, validation, and performance monitoring frameworks.
• Optimize systems for performance, scalability, and resilience at enterprise scale.
• Agentic AI & Automation Systems Lead development of multi-agent AI systems for operational optimization and workflow automation.
• Establish standards for prompt engineering, reasoning reliability, and agent evaluation.
• Translate complex operational challenges into structured AI solutions.
• Technical Leadership Serve as senior technical authority within the Cyber AI Engineering vertical.
• Mentor AI and data engineers in production systems design.
• Contribute to roadmap definition and technical prioritization.
• Communicate system design and risk tradeoffs to senior stakeholders as needed.

Benefits

• Available benefits include medical, dental, vision healthcare and other insurance benefits (for employee and family), retirement benefits, including 401(k), paid holidays, vacation, and compassionate and sick days.
• More information about benefits is available at https://jobs.merck.com/us/en/compensation-and-benefits .

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees