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Assoc. Dir, Agentic Standards & Context Intelligence

MSD


Job Location:

Rahway, NJ - USA

Yearly Salary: USD 173200 - 272600
Posted: 1 October 2026 (3 days ago)
Application Deadline: 29 December 2026
Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Job Description

Generative and agentic AI are reshaping how commercial teams work from how insights are surfaced to how content is created and reviewed to how decisions are made in market. To move at the speed of that opportunity without compromising on trust compliance or quality the Human Health Division is scaling a GenAI & Agentic Center of Excellence: the team that defines the standards reusable frameworks and shared context foundations used to build evaluate and ship enterprise-grade AI agents across the commercial portfolio.


As adoption expands across therapeutic areas business units and international markets two things determine whether agents scale well: an opinionated well-governed rulebook that every agent team can start from and a shared context foundation so that agents reason with consistent business meaning rather than re-interpreting raw data differently each time. Standards without context produce compliant but analytically wrong agents; context without standards produces inconsistency at scale.


The Associate Director Agentic Standards & Context Intelligence Lead will lead the Agentic Standards & Context Intelligence pillar within the CoE owning both halves of that equation. This leader will be accountable for the enterprise standards playbooks and specifications that shape how commercial AI agents are designed deployed and operated and for the shared governed context layer that encodes commercial entities metric definitions and domain semantics so agents reason with a common understanding of the business. This individual will partner closely with responsible-AI engineering platform data business activation and enterprise governance teams to ensure standards and context are not only published but activated in the day-to-day work of the teams building AI agents.


Primary Responsibilities include:

  • Standards vision and roadmap: Defining and evolving playbooks specifications and technical standards across the full agent lifecycle (design deploy monitor improve) and driving them from research-backed drafts through use-case-validated versions.
  • Context intelligence strategy: Owning the strategy for the shared governed context layer ontology knowledge graph semantic definitions metric registries and business glossary so agents reason with consistent commercial meaning (brands channels vendors KPIs) rather than raw table lookups.
  • Context as infrastructure: Elevating context handling to a first-class measurable component of the platform with instrumentation lifecycle controls versioning and health metrics (accuracy freshness compliance) that make context quality continuously measurable and improvable at scale.
  • Standards adoption and enablement: Driving socialization and adoption of agentic standards and context patterns across business CoE and platform teams through enablement content starter kits reference patterns and developer-facing integrations.
  • Enterprise alignment: Aligning CoE standards and context approaches with broader enterprise architecture data and governance functions clarifying CoE vs. enterprise responsibilities and influencing enterprise-level standards.
  • Cross-pillar partnership: Partnering with responsible-AI governance engagement and platform teams to translate standards and context capabilities into reusable delivery patterns and operational practices.
  • Measurement and continuous improvement: Establishing metrics for standards adoption context quality and business impact and running feedback loops that translate developer and business input into standards and context revisions.
  • Team leadership: Leading coaching and scaling a team of technical specialists across standards authorship context engineering and adoption.



Basic Qualifications

  • Bachelors degree in Computer Science Data Science Engineering Information Technology or a related STEM field
  • Experience defining and driving adoption of technical standards playbooks or frameworks in a large matrixed organization
  • Hands-on understanding of the GenAI agent lifecycle (design deploy monitor improve) including retrieval-augmented generation tool use orchestration evaluation and guardrails
  • Experience with context engineering concepts applied to AI systems grounding retrieval strategy semantic definitions or shared context layers
  • Experience influencing senior stakeholders across engineering data product and enterprise governance functions

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience in a regulated industry (pharmaceutical healthcare financial services) with audit and compliance obligations
  • Experience designing or governing ontology knowledge graph semantic layer business glossary or metric registry capabilities for analytics or AI consumption
  • Experience instrumenting context or data quality metrics (accuracy freshness compliance lineage) as measurable platform health signals
  • Experience with evaluation-driven and specification-driven development practices for AI agents
  • Experience standing up or scaling an AI center of excellence platform governance function or standards program with measurable adoption outcomes
  • Experience leading and mentoring a technical team spanning standards and data/context disciplines

Required Skills

Agentic AI Standards AI Governance AI Playbook Development Change Management Context Engineering Cross-Functional Collaboration Generative AI (GenAI) Governance Frameworks Knowledge Graphs & Ontology Large Language Models (LLMs) Multi-Agent Systems People Leadership Program Management Responsible AI Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Semantic Layer Design Stakeholder Relationship Management Standards Adoption Strategic Communications Technical Leadership


Preferred Skills

Access-Aware Retrieval Agent Evaluation Agent Observability Business Glossary & Metric Registry Design Context Health Metrics (Accuracy Freshness Compliance) Data Governance for AI Enterprise Architecture Influence MLOps / LLMOps Prompt Engineering Libraries Regulated-Industry AI Experience

Required Skills:

Business Informatics Business Informatics Business Insights Business Intelligence (BI) Business Metrics Computer Science Content Development Content Management Content Marketing Database Design Data Engineering Data Modeling Data Science Data Visualization Design for Maintainability Developer Tools Engineering Leadership First Order Logic Life Cycle Planning Machine Learning (ML) Progress Monitoring Software Agent Software Development Stakeholder Relationship Management Standards Compliance 3 more

Preferred Skills:

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As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race color age religion sex sexual orientation gender identity national origin protected veteran status disability status or other applicable legally protected a federal contractor we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws visit:

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The salary range for this role is

$173200.00 - $272600.00

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 can apply for this role through (or via the Workday Jobs Hub if you are a current employee). The application deadline for this position is stated on this posting.

San Francisco Residents Only:We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance

Los Angeles Residents Only:We will consider for employment all qualified applicants including those with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws including the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance

Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully
Merck & Co. Inc. Rahway NJ USA also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC Rahway NJ USA does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place introductions are position specific. Please no phone calls or emails.

Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

No relocation

VISA Sponsorship:

No

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Hybrid

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

10/14/2026

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFOREthe listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.


Required Experience:

Unclear Seniority


About Company

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Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, New Jersey, USA is known as “Merck” in the United States, Canada & Puerto Rico. We are known as “MSD” in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America & Asia Pacific. We are a global biopharmaceutical leader with a diverse portfolio of prescription medicine ... View more

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