Associate Director, Global AI Forecasting

AbbVie’s Global Forecasting Center of Excellence sets forecasting standards and builds the analytical capabilities that guide enterprise planning. As Associate Director, AI Forecasting, you will lead the operation, expansion, and governance of AI and machine learning models used to forecast commercial volume across brands and geographies. You will set technical standards, guide model development and deployment, and partner with forecasting, finance, technology, and business leaders to keep model outputs reliable, explainable, scalable, and aligned with planning cycles. Responsibilities • Lead the operation and maintenance of AI/ML forecasting models, ensuring their ongoing accuracy, reliability, performance, and fitness for use in commercial forecasting.  • Ensure model outputs are delivered on schedule to support financial planning cycles and downstream business deadlines.  • Define and maintain standards for developing new forecasting models, including data requirements, feature engineering, model selection, validation, documentation, integration, and handoff.  • Partner with forecasters, brand teams, finance leaders, and technology teams to understand business dynamics, curate inputs, determine when model changes are warranted, and integrate approved changes into operational workflows.  • Translate complex or counterintuitive model results into clear, well-supported business explanations that help leaders understand and confidently use model outputs. • Identify and prioritize the brands and geographies where AI-enabled forecasting can create the greatest value, balancing quality, scalability, and delivery timelines across concurrent workstreams.  • Serve as a technical leader for AI/ML methods applied to commercial forecasting, evaluating emerging approaches, including large language models and generative AI, for responsible business use.  • Contribute technical expertise to model governance, including documentation standards, validation protocols, monitoring, review processes, and responsible-use guidelines.  • Lead, coach, and develop a team of forecasting data science professionals, setting priorities, allocating work, providing feedback, and building technical capability as the modeling portfolio grows.  Required  • Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative field such as Statistics, Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering, or Mathematics (advanced degree strongly preferred).  • 7+ years of progressive experience in quantitative or analytical roles, with demonstrated depth in machine learning model development, validation, deployment, and ongoing operation.  • Expert-level proficiency in machine learning, including time-series forecasting, supervised learning, ensemble methods, and model performance evaluation.  • Proficiency in Python and/or R, with hands-on experience building, deploying, and maintaining production-grade ML models.  • Ability to translate business context into modeling decisions and communicate technical outputs clearly to non-technical audiences and senior leaders.  • Experience leading technical teams or workstreams and delivering high-quality results across multiple concurrent priorities in a complex, matrixed environment.  • Strong documentation, knowledge management, problem-solving, and judgment.  Preferred  • Experience in pharmaceutical, biotech, or life sciences commercial analytics, forecasting, or data science.  • Experience with commercial volume forecasting and pharmaceutical data sources, such as prescription, patient flow, distribution, and epidemiology data.  • Experience integrating AI/ML models into operational business processes with defined planning cycles and downstream dependencies.  • Familiarity with enterprise forecasting platforms and model governance framework