Head of Data and AI - EAST COAST

Role overview This is a hands-on technical leadership role responsible for setting and executing the end-to-end data and artificial intelligence strategy for a cloud-native SaaS platform operating in a heavily regulated industry. The position partners with Product, Engineering, Architecture, Security, and the executive team to ship production-grade AI capabilities, while co-owning the roadmap alongside a Product Director focused on AI and data products.

Responsibilities - Define and drive the technical strategy and execution roadmap for AI-enabled capabilities across the platform, from ideation through production delivery - Champion adoption of generative AI, LLM-based architectures, predictive analytics, graph intelligence, recommendation systems, and semantic search where they deliver measurable customer value - Own the data foundation strategy, ensuring clean, trusted, well-governed data underpins every AI initiative - Build robust MLOps capabilities including model training pipelines, versioning, monitoring, A/B experimentation, and drift detection - Promote pragmatic AI adoption within engineering and product development to accelerate delivery velocity - Recruit, mentor, and scale a high-performing Data and AI organization spanning data engineering, data science, ML engineering, and analytics - Align AI and data investments with company strategy and commercial priorities in close partnership with senior leadership

Requirements - Demonstrated track record of delivering production-grade AI and ML systems at scale, beyond experimentation - Deep experience with generative AI and LLM-based application architectures, including fine-tuning, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic frameworks - Strong working knowledge of vector databases and semantic search tooling - Background in large-scale data engineering, modern ELT/ETL patterns, and cloud data warehouse modeling - Hands-on experience with Azure ecosystem services spanning data, analytics, and machine learning - Solid software engineering fundamentals and credibility engaging at technical depth with senior engineers - Experience leading and scaling high-performing data or AI teams, ideally within regulated domains such as financial services, regtech, compliance, or surveillance - Strong commercial instincts connecting technical investment to customer value and business outcomes

Nice to have - Background working with cloud-native, microservices, and event-driven architectures - Experience making build-versus-buy-versus-integrate decisions across AI and data tooling landscapes

Benefits and work setup The role is positioned for candidates based on the East Coast and combines strategic leadership with deep hands-on technical involvement. Personal integrity and ethical conduct are highlighted as core expectations for the position.