Director, Data & AI Platforms

Johnson & Johnson is hiring a Director, Data & AI Platforms. It pays $168k-$291k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Johnson & Johnson.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
The posting mentions Bedrock, Databricks and RAG among its tools and skills.
Level classes it as an executive role.
Johnson & Johnson has 1,700+ other open roles on Level.
Posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

BedrockDatabricks

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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.

DePuy Synthes is the orthopaedics business of Johnson & Johnson. As part of its strategy to enhance the strategic and operational focus of each business, Johnson & Johnson intends to separate its Orthopaedics business and establish DePuy Synthes as a standalone company.

Upon completion of the planned separation, DePuy Synthes will become the largest, most comprehensive orthopaedics-focused company, with leading market share positions across joint reconstruction, trauma, spine, sports medicine and craniomaxillofacial solutions.

Operating in a $50 billion+ global market and serving approximately seven million patients annually, the company is well positioned to advance patient care through continued innovation, clinical expertise and digital technologies, including the VELYS™ Digital Surgery portfolio.

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: https://www.careers.jnj.com/employee-benefits

How we rate this

Director, Data & AI Platforms at Johnson & Johnson rates 69 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Director, Data & AI Platforms is an open job at Johnson & Johnson.
Level rates this role AI Level 3 of 4: Works on AI.
The listed salary is $168k-$291k a year.
The role is based in Raritan, New Jersey, United States of America.
The job was posted on November 5, 2026.
Seniority: executive.
Applications are handled by Johnson & Johnson. Apply on Johnson & Johnson

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

RAGML OpsAI SafetyBedrockDatabricks

Questions you could be asked

How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
How do you think about the risk of an AI system in this kind of role failing silently?
What's a project where you used Bedrock hands-on?
Walk me through how you've used Databricks in your day-to-day work.

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: RAG, ML Ops, AI Safety, Bedrock, and Databricks. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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