Director, Customer Success

Director, Ai Innovation Studios

The Director, AI Innovation Studios leads a small, high-impact team of consultants, analysts, and facilitators that drives discovery and early incubation of AI opportunities across the enterprise. This is a hands-on director-level role that combines client-facing consulting and workshop facilitation with people leadership, operational ownership of a studio team, and accountability for moving well-scoped opportunities into rapid proofs-of-concept (PoCs), prototypes, and handoff to Product or Delivery teams.

The Director will translate business challenges into measurable AI use cases, create compelling business cases and success criteria, and ensure rigorous, ethical, and outcome-focused execution across discovery and early delivery phases.

Key Responsibilities

Practice Leadership & Strategy

• Contribute to the vision and operating model for the AI Innovation Studios aligned to APEX / Compass priorities and the Chief AI Officers strategy.
• Define Studio methodologies, templates, toolkits, intake and prioritization criteria, and measurable success metrics for discovery engagements and rapid PoCs.
• Maintain relationships with adjacent APEX functions (Product Management, Portfolio Management, Engagement, Process Intelligence, Data Science / AI engineering) to enable efficient handoffs and access to technical expertise.

Team Leadership & Talent Development

Client Engagement & Discovery

Rapid Prototyping & PoC Oversight

Governance, Prioritization & Portfolio Alignment

Ethics, Risk & Adoption

Methods, Tools & Partnerships

Success Metrics

Required Qualifications & Skills

Preferred Qualifications

Organizational Context & Operating Expectations

This Director will report to the Executive Director, AI Compass and will partner regularly with Product Management, Portfolio Management, Engagement, Delivery, Security & Privacy, and divisional IT leads.

The role is expected to be both strategically minded and operationally grounded : roughly balancing enabling / mentoring the team and personally leading high-priority engagements.

All team members are U.S.-based and work in a hybrid model; in-person travel to business locations is expected as required (up to 75%).

The salary range for this role is $169,700.00 - $267,200.00. This is the lowest to highest salary we in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting. An employees position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, government requirements, and business or organizational needs.

The successful candidate will be eligible for annual bonus and long-term incentive, if applicable. We offer a comprehensive package of 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 .