Aaditya Kurde
Pune,India
Summary
Senior AI Leader with 16 years of experience leading Data Science, Generative AI, and Agentic AI initiatives across global enterprises. Skilled in building and scaling GCC data and AI organizations in India while driving enterprise-wide AI strategy and transformation. Deep expertise in LLMs, RAG, multi-agent systems, advanced ML, and cloud-native AI platforms. Strong cross-functional leader with a track record of converting complex business problems into scalable AI solutions. Known for stakeholder influence, talent development, and delivering measurable business impact across global markets.
Overview
16
16
years of professional experience
Work History
Associate Director Data Science
Merck Sharp & Dohme
09.2024 - 02.2026
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to streamline project workflows and ensure timely delivery of objectives.
- Analyzed market trends and competitive landscape to inform decision-making and drive business growth strategies.
- Managed stakeholder communications, facilitating alignment on project goals and expectations across departments.
- Conducted training sessions for junior staff, fostering skill development and knowledge sharing within the team.
- Implemented data-driven decision-making strategies, leading to more informed business choices and positive outcomes.
- Leveraged data and analytics to make informed decisions and drive business improvements.
- Built and led a data science community of more than 500 practitioners across the globe, leading to better knowledge and best practices sharing, driving innovation, and collaborative problem solving.
- Created a Talent Growth Framework to facilitate talent growth and movement across teams, geographies, and functions.
- Created a strategic roadmap for the Digital and Data Analytics Delivery Hub Development.
- Lead initiatives like AI Innovation Labs to catalyze ideas that have the potential for business growth, operational efficiency, and time to insights.
- Lead the IP incubation initiative to create a framework for identifying and protecting valuable IP.
Associate Director Data Science
Merck Sharp & Dohme
09.2022 - 08.2024
- Leadership role in MSD's Global Capability Center, Pune - a key member in setting up the Capability Center in Pune - collaborated with multiple teams to get the best-in-class employee experience, compensations, benefits, growth opportunities, and to set the right culture, etc.
- Head of Data Science, India - Built, led, and mentored the AI and Data Science Capability Team in India, directly responsible for 60 resources at various levels.
- Strategic Leadership – Set the overall direction and strategy for the team, aligning with the vision of global leaders and the business objectives of the organization.
- Data Science Delivery - Lead workstreams including Segmentation and Targeting, Market Access, Promotional Impact Assessment through MMX, ROI, and Commercial Spend Optimization, Next Best Action recommenders, and Patient Insights.
- LLMs and Gen AI Delivery - Created workstreams for Gen AI for conversational models/apps for Branding and Marketing teams, and Agentic AI applications.
- Thought Leadership - Collaborated with global teams to evaluate, expand, and enhance the scope of new and existing solutions to make them reusable and scalable ("Lego blocks").
- Vendor Governance – Meeting account leads and vendor teams at a regular cadence to conduct account health checks, project reviews, and provide regular feedback.
- Established performance goals for employees and provided feedback on methods for reaching those milestones.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to streamline project workflows and ensure timely delivery of objectives.
- Established strong relationships with key industry partners, creating mutually beneficial opportunities for growth and collaboration.
- Oversaw annual budget planning and expenditure for the DS team while adhering to compliance.
- Collaborated closely with peers from other capabilities to drive organizational success, jointly, as one cohesive unit.
- Reduced costs, optimized resource allocation, and improved efficiency in managing projects.
- Spearheaded change management for the seamless adoption of new systems, organizational structures, and processes among employees.
Senior Manager, Data Science
Accenture
08.2021 - 09.2022
- Collaborated with stakeholders to design and execute comprehensive project plans aligned with client objectives.
- Evaluated performance metrics, identifying areas for improvement and implementing corrective actions effectively.
- Provided strong leadership to enhance team productivity and morale.
- Led cross-functional teams to achieve project milestones and deliver high-quality results.
- Established strong relationships with clients and stakeholders, ensuring long-term partnerships and repeat business.
- Conducted performance evaluations, compensations and hiring to maintain appropriate staffing requirements.
- Implemented innovative solutions to overcome challenges, leading to enhanced productivity levels.
- Led the development of an AI framework for automated annotations on clinical charts for Risk Adjustment, NCQA, and HEDIS Compliance Audits.
- Improved team productivity by implementing agile methodologies, reducing project completion times and enhancing collaboration.
- Led Go-to-Market – RFPs, client account leads, connections, workshops, etc.
- Responsible for handling multiple accounts.
- Project Planning – SOW, WBS, Costing, and Estimations - Resources and Infrastructure.
Manager II - Data Analytics
CitiusTech Healthcare Technology
01.2019 - 08.2021
- Led large-scale ML/AI initiatives across nephrology and clinical trial domains, including: AI-driven dosage recommendation engine for parathyroid hormone (PTH)–lowering therapy in CKD–MBD patients, and ML-enabled automated SDTM to ADaM conversion engine (CDISC standards) for clinical trial workflows.
- Directed comprehensive project scopes, including end-to-end EDA, assessment of multi-drug effects on lab values, advanced data wrangling (R/Python), feature engineering, and mixed-effect model development on GCP.
- Led the design and development of an automated clinical data transformation engine, covering: advanced data massaging/wrangling using R, feature generation and ML model development, and an automated conversion pipeline for SDTM-PC → ADPC datasets.
- Oversaw full lifecycle model development and deployment on Google Cloud Platform, including code versioning, and DevOps workflows through GitLab.
- Managed and mentored a multidisciplinary team of data scientists, data visualization analysts, and data engineers, ensuring the delivery of high-quality analytics, models, and cloud workflows.
- Owned offshore delivery management for data science and data visualization workstreams, driving delivery excellence, productivity, and cross-geo alignment.
- Drove innovation and thought leadership by promoting new analytical approaches, AI/ML techniques, and scalable cloud architectures.
- Collaborated directly with cross-functional stakeholders and clients to elicit requirements, align on analytical objectives, and conduct iterative reviews.
- Spearheaded strategic and tactical planning for analytics teams, optimizing resource allocation, and ensuring alignment with organizational priorities.
- Guided teams in writing robust, reproducible R/Python codebases for complex statistical analyses, ML model building, and scalable GCP-native pipelines.
- Architected end-to-end data science workflows, cloud deployment strategies, and automation frameworks on GCP.
Senior Consultant
Deloitte
11.2017 - 01.2019
- Led the end-to-end development of cloud-native analytics and AI solutions on the Google Cloud Platform, including customer analytics, segmentation, predictive modeling, and dashboarding for global clients.
- Directed advanced data engineering workflows using BigQuery, SQL, and Python to perform deep-dive EDA, data massaging, feature engineering, and preparation for advanced ML algorithms.
- Oversaw the design, training, testing, and deployment of machine learning models, ensuring high accuracy, scalability, and alignment with business objectives.
- Managed offshore and onshore teams to deliver high-quality analytical outputs, ML models, and dashboards within aggressive timelines, maintaining rigorous delivery governance and quality checks.
- Collaborated directly with senior stakeholders for requirement gathering, solution design, SQL workflow development, and review cycles, acting as the strategic bridge between business needs and technical execution.
- Provided functional and technical leadership across EDA, model development, and dashboarding, guiding teams on best practices in analytics, modeling, and data visualization.
- Worked hands-on in data extraction, transformation, and predictive modeling to ensure solution robustness, and accelerate delivery for complex analytical use cases.
- Led continuous testing, validation, and refinement of models in partnership with clients, ensuring tight alignment with evolving business requirements and performance expectations.
- Directed a predictive analytics program for forecasting sales realization for a global electronics manufacturer, integrating data from Helios, SFDC AFO, and SAP to build a constrained sales forecasting model.
- Guided exploratory analyses to uncover deep business insights and support model development, improving forecast precision, and strategic sales planning.
- Oversaw the creation of an interactive scenario-simulation dashboard that enabled business leaders to visualize annual forecasts, and evaluate alternative planning strategies.
- Customized and adapted the global forecasting model for multiple markets, incorporating region-specific behaviors, market dynamics, and funnel conversion patterns.
- Managed client-location project execution, requirement alignment, and stakeholder communications to ensure successful delivery and adoption of analytics solutions across business groups.
Engineer
Eaton Corporation
11.2012 - 10.2017
- Led the development of advanced predictive models for solar intensity and power-grid load forecasting, leveraging historical PV output, meteorological parameters, and load-demand patterns to support intelligent grid optimization.
- Collaborated with cross-functional engineering teams to design analytics frameworks that improve power grid stability, optimize energy distribution, and support renewable energy integration.
- Directed exploratory data analysis to uncover trends, seasonality, intermittency patterns, and the impact of key meteorological drivers, such as turbidity, humidity, wind speed, and atmospheric pressure.
- Guided the design, prototyping, and evaluation of multiple machine learning and statistical models in R, ensuring a rigorous assessment of performance across intermittent and noisy datasets.
- Oversaw the implementation of high-performing forecasting models in Python, enabling the scalable deployment of predictive insights into engineering workflows.
- Implemented and operationalized advanced time-series and machine learning approaches, including ARIMA, Holt-Winters, and neural-network models, to forecast both solar generation and grid load variability.
- Provided analytical leadership in assessing the interplay between PV output, load demand, and grid stability, generating insights that informed operational planning and grid-resilience strategies.
- Strengthened the predictive modeling pipeline and contributed to intelligent power-grid initiatives by aligning technical solutions with engineering requirements, and operational constraints.
Patent Engineer
Motorola (Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions)
06.2011 - 10.2012
- Led end-to-end patent landscape analysis initiatives to evaluate technology trends, white-space opportunities, and competitive positioning across Motorola and key industry competitors.
- Directed advanced statistical analysis on large patent corpora to identify filing patterns, innovation velocity, portfolio strengths, and emerging technology clusters.
- Oversaw the design and execution of text analytics workflows—including NLP-based keyword extraction, clustering, topic modeling, and semantic similarity scoring—to derive deep insights from unstructured patent narratives.
- Guided the development of interactive visualization dashboards using multi-layered charts (heatmaps, treemaps, network graphs, timelines, sunbursts, etc.). To illustrate technology concentrations, competitor overlaps, and innovation trajectories.
- Spearheaded a detailed competitive benchmarking study comparing Motorola’s IP footprint with major competitors across domains, highlighting differentiation areas, saturation zones, and potential IP risks.
- Collaborated with product, engineering, and IP leadership to translate analytical findings into strategic recommendations on R&D direction, patent filings, and technology investment priorities.
- Managed cross-functional teams in data gathering, cleaning, classification, and analysis of thousands of patents across global jurisdictions, ensuring accuracy, reproducibility, and analytical rigor.
- Streamlined the patent evaluation process by operationalizing automated text mining and visualization frameworks, significantly reducing manual review time and improving insight generation.
- Informed executive decision-making through clear storytelling, insight-first presentations, and actionable intelligence on technology evolution and competitor innovation strategies.
Patent Associate
R.K Dewan & Co.
11.2009 - 04.2011
- Led analytics-driven patent landscape programs, transforming large, unstructured global patent corpora into structured datasets for strategic decision-making.
- Directed statistical analysis and modeling on patent, citation, and assignee data to uncover technology trends, innovation hotspots, and white-space opportunities across target domains.
- Collaborated with colleagues, clients, and technical experts to translate analytical insights into clear recommendations on R&D focus, filing strategy, and portfolio optimization, positioning analytics as a core decision-support capability.
Education
General Management Program For Executives - Business Administration And Management
Indian Institute of Management
Indore, India01-2023
Master of Technology - Embedded Systems
Birla Institute of Technology And Science
Pilani, India02-2017
Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics And Communication
Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya
Bhopal, India05-2009
Skills
- Strategic Leadership & Vision
- Cross-Functional Team Leadership
- Innovation & Thought Leadership
- Stakeholder Management & Executive Communication
- Product & Program Management
- Mentorship, Coaching & Talent Development
- Change Management & Organizational Scaling
- Decision-Making & Problem Solving
- Client & Partner Relationship Management
- Delivery Excellence & Governance
- Data & AI Strategy Leadership
- Budgeting, Resource Planning & Operations Management
- Generative AI & LLMs
Leadership :
Technical :
- Agentic AI & Multi-Agent Systems
- Machine Learning & Statistical Modeling
- Deep Learning & Neural Architectures
- MLOps & Production AI
- Data Engineering & Big Data Technologies
- Cloud Platforms & AI Services
- Databases & Data Warehousing
- Programming & Scripting
- Analytics, BI & Visualization
- Data Strategy, Governance & Responsible AI
- LLMs, Gen AI and Agentic AI
- MMX, ROI, Spend Optimization
- Patient Insights
- Market Activation
Achievements
- Multiple Inspire Awards from MSD/Merck Senior Leaders
- 1st Prize Lead by Example @ CitiusTech Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. – Productionizing ML Models on Google Kubernetes Engine & CI/CD Pipeline
- E Star Award @ Eaton Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
- US Patent Pending – Patent Application Number 62/954,070 - System and Method for Load and Source Forecasting for increasing Electrical Grid Component Longevity
- US Patent Pending – Patent Application Number 18/767602 – Communication Generation with Artificial Intelligence System
Languages
English
Full Professional
Hindi
Full Professional
Timeline
Associate Director Data Science
Merck Sharp & Dohme
09.2024 - 02.2026
Associate Director Data Science
Merck Sharp & Dohme
09.2022 - 08.2024
Senior Manager, Data Science
Accenture
08.2021 - 09.2022
Manager II - Data Analytics
CitiusTech Healthcare Technology
01.2019 - 08.2021
Senior Consultant
Deloitte
11.2017 - 01.2019
Engineer
Eaton Corporation
11.2012 - 10.2017
Patent Engineer
Motorola (Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions)
06.2011 - 10.2012
Patent Associate
R.K Dewan & Co.
11.2009 - 04.2011
General Management Program For Executives - Business Administration And Management
Indian Institute of Management
Master of Technology - Embedded Systems
Birla Institute of Technology And Science
Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics And Communication
Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya