Position Summary:

The Director of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is responsible for establishing and scaling Heartland Business Systems’ AI function, initially focused on delivering high-impact internal business use cases and building the foundation for long-term AI adoption across the organization.

The role operates in a matrix model, leveraging existing engineering, data, and product resources while managing targeted budget for dedicated development and product capacity. Early in the role, the Director of AI will lead by example – personally architecting and delivering AI solutions to provide value, establish standards, and accelerate organizational adoption.  

As AI capabilities mature across the organization, the role will evolve toward leading through teams and partners, with increasing focus on platform governance, roadmap ownership, and scaling AI impact across internal operations and, over time, future client-facing capabilities.  

Roles and Responsibilities/ Essential Functions:

• Establish and lead the AI function at HBS, initially prioritizing internal business use cases that demonstrate measurable value.
• Architect and deliver initial AI solutions hands-on, setting technical patterns, standards, and credibility for broader adoption.
• Build and govern a scalable AI platform that can be leveraged across internal systems and in the future client-facing solutions.
• Operate effectively in a matrixed delivery model, coordinating existing engineering, data, and product resources without direct authority.  
• Manage allocated AI development and product budget, prioritizing initiatives based on business impact and organizational readiness.
• Define and institutionalize AI standards, lifecycle practices, and governance including responsible AI, data integrity, and model oversight. 
• Establish success metrics for AI initiatives and regularly communicate progress and business impact to executive stakeholders.
• Transition from direct execution to leading through teams and partners, coaching others and enabling sustained AI delivery across the organization.  

Competencies:

• Accountability: Accountability looks at the extent to which an individual is willing to accept responsibility.
• Adaptability: Adaptability looks at the extent to which an individual can fit into a changing working environment.
• Business Acumen: Business acumen looks at the ability of the individual to understand and discriminate between various business related topics and issues. This includes insight into, and understanding of, specialized business concepts.
• Change Management: Change management looks at the ability of the individual to encourage others to seek opportunities for different and innovative approaches to addressing problems and opportunities.
• Communication: Communication skills looks at the extent to which an individual communicates with economy and clarity to all levels of the organization, actively engaging in conversations in order to clearly understand others' message and intent, and receives and processes feedback.
• Conceptual Thinking: Conceptual thinking is the ability to understand a situation or problem by identifying patterns or connections between ideas or situations that are not obviously related; to recognize and organize the parts of an issue in a systematic way; and to frame new ideas and courses of action.
• Decision Making: Decision making skills look at the ability of the individual to select an effective course of action while controlling resources and expenditures.
• Innovative: Innovation is the ability to go beyond the conventional, a willingness to try different solutions, and to encourage new ideas from employees and co-workers.
• Persuasive: Persuasiveness looks at the ability of the individual to influence others toward some action or point of view; for example, recommending an innovative solution to a problem

Required Experience:

• 8+ years of hands-on experience designing and implementing AI solutions in production environments, with demonstrated progression from hands-on execution to technical leadership
• Experience defining and leading large-scale projects with multiple stakeholders.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills with C-level and operational decisionmakers. 

Required Skills, Education and/ or Certifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Computer Science, related field or equivalent experience
• Expertise with technologies such as transfer learning, unsupervised feature generation, meta-learning, generative text models, computer vision, or reinforcement learning.
• Advanced data science and mathematical skills.

Preferred Skills, Education and/ or Certifications:

• Advanced degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.

Equal Opportunity Employer – Including Disabled and Veterans 

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