Job Description
At Vertex, we continue to invest in a future-ready workforce where AI helps people strengthen expertise, improve decision-making and create greater impact for our people and patients. We are looking for a Senior Director, AI Transformation Strategy to help prioritize and coordinate the portfolio of big bets we are making to reinvent our most important workflows with AI.
Reporting to the VP, AI Transformation, you will lead the enterprise portfolio strategy for Vertex’s AI transformation by prioritizing, sequencing, and tracking the portfolio of reinvention projects, to ensure we scale responsibly and strategically.
You will provide senior leaders with a clear, real-time view of the whole portfolio, so they can see how reinvention projects are progressing, where progress is at risk, and where to accelerate, pause, or resequence. This includes building the models, frameworks, and reporting that support enterprise decisions, aligning teams and navigating dependencies, and partnering closely with Finance, AI Transformation Operations, Workforce Strategy & Innovation, Data Technology & Engineering, and functional leaders to keep the portfolio focused, current, and tied to real business value.
To succeed, you will bring clarity to a portfolio of deeply connected projects across teams, providing a shared, evidence-based view of progress, dependencies, and decisions. You will model responsible use by continuously learning, applying AI to innovate your own work, and championing practices that create value.
Key Duties & Responsibilities:
- Enterprise portfolio view. Maintain a single, current view of Vertex’s AI transformation portfolio, including each project’s purpose, scope, status, timing, expected value, readiness, risks, and key dependencies.
- Portfolio prioritization. Develop recommendations on which reinvention projects should move forward and how they should be sequenced based on strategic importance, expected value, readiness, risk, dependencies, and organizational capacity.
- Investment governance. Design and facilitate a consistent process for reviewing investments and supporting decisions to accelerate, pause, resequence, or stop work.
- Portfolio interdependencies. Identify and navigate the dependencies across projects, teams, timelines, and resources, and adjust sequencing as those dependencies shift.
- Cross-functional alignment. Build alignment among project sponsors, functional leaders, and key partners so priorities, responsibilities, decisions, and expectations remain clear across the portfolio.
- Executive reporting and decision support. Give senior leaders a concise, evidence-based view of portfolio progress, emerging risks, and upcoming decisions, along with the scenarios, portfolio models, and recommendations they need to weigh competing priorities and decide with confidence.
- Investment and capacity alignment. Partner with Finance, Data Technology & Engineering, Workforce Strategy & Innovation, AI Transformation Operations, and functional leaders to connect portfolio priorities with available funding, resources, delivery capacity, and workforce readiness.
- Portfolio evolution. Regularly refresh the portfolio as business priorities, evidence, technology, and external developments change, keeping Vertex’s AI transformation focused on the opportunities with the greatest potential value.
Knowledge and Skills:
- Deep knowledge of enterprise portfolio strategy, investment governance, prioritization, sequencing, and portfolio-performance management.
- Strong analytical and strategic-thinking skills, including the ability to integrate incomplete or competing information into clear, evidence-based recommendations.
- Strong financial and business acumen, including the ability to interpret value cases, investment assumptions, capacity constraints, and portfolio-performance evidence.
- Ability to identify and evaluate interdependencies across projects, functions, resources, timelines, and strategic priorities.
- Ability to build and interpret portfolio models, scenarios, decision frameworks, and executive-level portfolio views.
- Excellent executive communication and data-storytelling skills, with the ability to translate complex portfolio evidence into concise choices and recommendations.
- Strong cross-functional influence and alignment skills, particularly across Finance, Workforce Strategy & Innovation, Data Technology & Engineering, AI Transformation Operations, and business functions.
- Practical fluency with AI tools and emerging AI capabilities, with the ability to apply AI responsibly to research, analysis, scenario development, and portfolio insight.
- Ability to operate effectively as enterprise priorities, evidence, technology, and external conditions evolve.
Education and Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, strategy, economics, engineering, analytics, or related field – or relevant experience
- Advanced degree preferred.
- Typically requires 12 or more years of experience in enterprise portfolio strategy, corporate strategy, strategic finance, investment governance, or transformation strategy, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Demonstrated experience developing recommendations for prioritizing and sequencing a complex portfolio of enterprise investments or transformation programs.
- Experience designing or facilitating portfolio governance and supporting senior leaders through consequential investment, prioritization, or resource-allocation decisions.
- Experience integrating strategic, financial, operational, workforce, risk, and delivery evidence into a coherent portfolio view.
- Experience developing scenarios, portfolio models, and executive recommendations that clarify choices, implications, and interdependencies.
- Experience advising senior executives and building alignment across functions with different priorities, constraints, and perspectives.
Pay Range:
$227,200 - $340,800Disclosure 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:
Hybrid-Eligible Or On-Site EligibleFlex Eligibility Status:
In this Hybrid-Eligible role, you can choose to be designated as:
1. Hybrid: work remotely up to two days per week; or select
2. 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-Hybrid
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 [email protected]
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in business, finance, strategy, economics, engineering, analytics, or a related field, or relevant equivalent experience
- Advanced degree
- Typically 12 or more years of experience in enterprise portfolio strategy, corporate strategy, strategic finance, investment governance, or transformation strategy, or an equivalent combination of education and experience
- Experience developing recommendations for prioritizing and sequencing a complex portfolio of enterprise investments or transformation programs
- Experience designing or facilitating portfolio governance and supporting senior leaders through investment, prioritization, or resource-allocation decisions
- Experience integrating strategic, financial, operational, workforce, risk, and delivery evidence into a coherent portfolio view
- Experience developing scenarios, portfolio models, and executive recommendations that clarify choices, implications, and interdependencies
- Experience advising senior executives and building alignment across functions with different priorities, constraints, and perspectives
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Vertex Pharmaceuticals and has not been reviewed or approved by Vertex Pharmaceuticals.
-
Parental & Family Support — Policies provide 12 weeks of 100% paid bonding leave for all U.S. parents with additional fully paid time for birth parents. Family-forming supports include adoption and surrogacy assistance, fertility options like IVF and egg cryopreservation, breast‑milk shipping, subsidized childcare, backup care, and a DCFSA match.
-
Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off includes roughly four weeks of vacation, 13 holidays, sick time, and two companywide shutdowns (summer and year‑end). Some roles also include flexible or unlimited time off and paid volunteer time.
-
Retirement Support — Programs include a 401(k) plan with employer contributions and an employee stock purchase plan. Filings describe employer contributions occurring in company stock, supporting long‑term ownership.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Insights
What We Do
Vertex is a global biotechnology company that invests in scientific innovation to create transformative medicines for people with serious and life-threatening diseases. We discovered and developed the first medicines to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis (CF), a rare, life-threatening genetic disease. In addition to clinical development programs in CF, Vertex has more than a dozen ongoing research programs focused on the underlying mechanisms of other serious diseases. Founded in 1989 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, our corporate headquarters is now located in Boston’s Innovation District, and our international headquarters is in London, United Kingdom. We currently employ approximately 3,500 people in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and Latin America with nearly two-thirds of our staff dedicated to research and development. Vertex is consistently recognized as one of the industry’s top places to work by Science Magazine, The Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal and the San Diego Business Journal. Our research and medicines have also received esteemed recognitions, including the Robert J. Beall Therapeutics Development Award, the French Prix Galien and the British Pharmacological Society awards.
