Director of Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning

Role overview

Lead the Machine Learning and AI function for a mission-driven nonprofit working to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse. This Director-level position reports to the CTO and partners with Engineering, Product, and cross-functional leaders to shape technical strategy while guiding an established team of ML engineers toward measurable mission impact. It is a remote-first leadership role combining hands-on technical direction, people development, and external representation of the organization's work.

Responsibilities

- Define and evolve the organization's ML and AI strategy in partnership with executive, product, and research stakeholders, adjusting direction as technologies, customer needs, and the child safety landscape shift. - Identify promising ML and AI approaches and translate research into clear recommendations on where to invest, build, partner, or evolve existing capabilities. - Drive the Technical Innovation Roadmap by exploring, prototyping, de-risking, and validating new capabilities that advance mission outcomes and inform product strategy. - Ensure ML systems uphold standards for privacy, security, responsible AI, regulatory compliance, reliability, and operational excellence, including careful oversight of sensitive datasets and external annotation partners. - Recruit, develop, coach, and retain ML talent and technical leaders, fostering psychological safety, high expectations, continuous learning, and clear ownership. - Collaborate with business development and strategic impact teams to connect research questions, ML expertise, and emerging opportunities into a unified research roadmap.

Requirements

- Extensive experience leading ML and AI functions or large teams, including managing senior technical leaders and individual contributors. - Deep technical background in machine learning, with the judgment to convert research and experimentation into reliable production systems. - Demonstrated ability to navigate complex stakeholder environments, build alignment across teams, and coach others toward outcomes. - Strong communication skills, including the ability to ask incisive questions, explain technical work clearly, and represent the organization externally with partners, funders, or industry forums. - Leadership style grounded in empathy, humility, transparency, and a trauma-informed approach to working on sensitive subject matter. - A clear commitment to centering the well-being of the children served in every decision.

Nice to have

- Experience with responsible AI practices, sensitive dataset governance, or content-safety applications. - Background working alongside law enforcement, NGO, or public-sector partners. - Track record of speaking at conferences or contributing to advisory forums in a technical domain.

Benefits and work setup

- Estimated compensation range of $188,000 to $302,450 per year, depending on location, skills, experience, and other factors. - Remote-first working model with occasional travel for company-wide gatherings, smaller team in-person sessions, and specific conferences. - Commitment to an inclusive workplace, with reasonable accommodations available for candidates and employees with disabilities.