Job Description This is a Hybrid position requiring 3 days a week in our Boston office We are seeking an experienced AI engineering leader to build and operate Vertex's Agent Intelligence layer: the memory, personas, skills, and flagship agent experiences that make every Vertex AI agent grounded, consistent, and effective. Vertex Pharmaceuticals is in a transformational period, and the AI team is at the center of our AI-first strategy, delivering solutions that empower executives, researchers, and business users to make faster, more confident decisions. As part of the Vertex Data team, you will lead the Agent Intelligence function within Knowledge & Grounding. You will own the four primitives that all Vertex agents are built from: agent memory (personal and organizational), personas as code, skills (atomic tools and higher-order compositions), and the flagship agents that put those primitives to work on Vertex's hardest use cases. As the Director of Agent Intelligence, you will build the reusable building blocks of agent intelligence at Vertex. Your work will multiply the velocity and quality of agent development across Vertex, ensuring every agent benefits from a common foundation of grounded, governed, and reusable intelligence. Key
Duties
and
Responsibilities
Agent Memory. Design and operate Vertex's agent memory layer, spanning personal memory (per-user, per-session continuity) and organizational memory (shared institutional knowledge agents accumulate and reuse), including retention, retrieval, conflict resolution, and classification policies. Personas as Code. Define and steward the persona system that gives Vertex agents their voice, remit, and boundaries, including versioning, review, composition, and deployment workflows. Skills Catalog & Compositions. Curate the catalog of atomic tools agents can call (retrieval, analytics, action) and the higher-order skill compositions that combine them into persona-specific workflows, with clear contracts, registry, and quality standards. Flagship Agent Development. Design, build, and deploy custom AI agents for Vertex's highest-value enterprise use cases using Snowflake Cortex AI, Databricks AI, and agent orchestration frameworks, using these builds to harden the underlying primitives. Enterprise Agent Standards. Define and maintain the enterprise standards for agent orchestration, prompt libraries, persona definitions, tool-use patterns, and response quality that all teams must follow, regardless of builder.
Experience
Consistency & UX Standards. Define the quality bar for conversational UX across the enterprise (tone/persona, citation patterns, error handling, escalation paths, transparency) and drive consistency across agents. Prompt & Skill Library Stewardship. Curate and govern reusable prompt and skill assets (system prompts, persona templates, tool instructions, conversation patterns) with documentation and contribution workflows. Knowledge and Skills: Proven Experience. 10+ years of experience in data engineering, AI/ML, or advanced analytics, with 3+ years specifically focused on NLP systems, AI agent development, or conversational AI. AI Agent Expertise. Hands-on experience building production AI agents using frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph, or similar orchestration tools. Cloud AI Platforms. Strong experience with Snowflake (Cortex AI, Cortex Analyst, Cortex Search) and/or Databricks (Agent Bricks, AI Functions, Mosaic AI) in enterprise environments. Full-Stack AI Engineering. Ability to work across the full AI stack, including data preparation, prompt engineering, agent orchestration, evaluation/testing, deployment, and monitoring. Memory & State Design. Direct experience designing how agents remember, including session state, long-horizon memory, retrieval over conversational history, and the data model behind it. Production Operations. Track record of operating AI systems in production with high availability, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Leadership & Communication. Proven ability to lead technical teams, communicate with executive stakeholders, and translate business needs into AI solutions. Preferred Pharma or Life Sciences Context.
Experience
in pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences data environments. Familiarity with clinical, regulatory, and commercial data domains is a plus. Platform Primitive Design.
Experience
designing reusable agent abstractions such as persona frameworks, skill registries, or tool catalogs. Agent Evaluation Tooling. Familiarity with evaluation tooling such as Braintrust, LangSmith, Mosaic AI Agent Evaluation, Arize, or Ragas. Model Customization.
Experience
with model fine-tuning, distillation, or post-training for domain adaptation.
Pay Range
$216,400 - $324,600 Disclosure Statement: The range provided is based on what we believe is a reasonable estimate for the base salary pay range for this job at the time of posting. This role is eligible for an annual bonus and annual equity awards. Some roles may also be eligible for overtime pay, in accordance with federal and state requirements. Actual base salary pay will be based on a number of factors, including skills, competencies, experience, and other job-related factors permitted by law. At Vertex, our Total Rewards offerings also include inclusive market-leading benefits to meet our employees wherever they are in their career, financial, family and wellbeing journey while providing flexibility and resources to support their growth and aspirations. From medical, dental and vision benefits to generous paid time off (including a week-long company shutdown in the Summer and the Winter), educational assistance programs including student loan repayment, a generous commuting subsidy, matching charitable donations, 401(k) and so much more. Flex Designation: Remote-Eligible Flex Eligibility Status: In this Remote-Eligible role, you can choose to be designated as: 1. Remote: work remotely five days per week and come into the office on occasion – you’re always welcome on-site; or select 2. Hybrid: work remotely up to two days per week; or select 3. On-Site: work five days per week on-site with ad hoc flexibility. Note: The Flex status for this position is subject to Vertex’s Policy on Flex @ Vertex Program and may be changed at any time. #LI-Remote Company Information Vertex is a global biotechnology company that invests in scientific innovation. Vertex is committed to equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination for all employees and qualified applicants without regard to a person's race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, or any characteristic protected under applicable law. Vertex is an E-Verify Employer in the United States. Vertex will make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with known disabilities, in accordance with applicable law. Any applicant requiring an accommodation in connection with the hiring process and/or to perform the essential functions of the position for which the applicant has applied should make a request to the recruiter or hiring manager, or contact Talent Acquisition at ApplicationAssistance@vrtx.com Help Us Achieve Our Mission Vertex is a global biotechnology company that invests in scientific innovation to create transformative medicines for people with serious diseases. The company has approved medicines that treat the underlying causes of multiple chronic, life-shortening genetic diseases — cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia — and continues to advance clinical and research programs in these diseases. Vertex also has a robust clinical pipeline of investigational therapies across a range of modalities in other serious diseases where it has deep insight into causal human biology, including APOL1-mediated kidney disease, acute and neuropathic pain, type 1 diabetes, myotonic dystrophy type 1 and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency . Founded in 1989 in Cambridge, Mass., Vertex's global headquarters is now located in Boston's Innovation District and its international headquarters is in London. Additionally, the company has research and development sites and commercial offices in North America, Europe, Australia, Latin America and the Middle East. Vertex is consistently recognized as one of the industry's top places to work, including 14 consecutive years on Science magazine's Top Employers list and one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. For company updates and to learn more about Vertex's history of innovation, visit www.vrtx.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter/X , LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram. The diversity and authenticity of our people is part of what makes Vertex unique, and we recognize that each employee brings diverse perspectives and strengths. By embracing those strengths and celebrating differences, we are fostering an inclusive culture where each of us can bring our authentic selves to work, inspire innovation together, and change people’s lives. Our vision is clear: to be the place where an authentic, diverse mix of talent want to come, to stay, and do their best work.