Director of Engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Role Overview

As our first dedicated engineering leader in this role, you will take full ownership of a team of roughly twenty engineers—shaping team structure, staffing engagements, and fostering accelerated professional growth. Beyond leading your span, you will partner with the AI Practice Lead to architect and refine practice-wide operational frameworks for hiring, onboarding, and continuous engineering enablement.

Reporting directly to the AI Practice Lead, you will work side-by-side with practice leadership, particularly during your initial two quarters. Approximately 50% of your role will be billable client engagement, positioning you as a high-value fractional advisor and platform leader across critical technical domains: AI SDLC, AI governance, agentic deployments, and cloud platform/pipeline architecture.

This position is tailored for a battle-tested leader with a proven track record of managing managers and engineering leaders. You have built and scaled the operational machinery that powers high-performing engineering organizations—and can showcase tangible, measurable outcomes from organizations that flourished under your design.

What You'll Do:

Span Leadership and People Management

Practice Machinery: Hiring, Onboarding, and Enablement

Hands-on Delivery and Client Engagement

Span Leadership and People Management

• Empower and lead a dedicated span of roughly twenty world-class engineers.

• Drive performance management, professional growth, career paths, and promotion pathways for everyone in your span in close alignment with the practice lead.

• Serve as the primary leadership point of escalation for engineering challenges within your span.

• Direct team staffing strategy in partnership with Resource Management and the practice lead, seamlessly matching engineering talent to high-impact engagements.

• Oversee contractor operations to ensure smooth onboarding, strategic contract extensions, and healthy engagement delivery.

• Mentor and coach team leads through crucial career conversations, performance coaching, and complex staffing decisions.

Practice Machinery: Hiring, Onboarding and Enablement

Spearhead the practice-wide hiring engine in collaboration with the practice lead: optimize interview panels, calibrate interviewer standards, expand capacity, prioritize top candidates, and elevate our partnership with Talent Acquisition.

Champion the entire career progression pipeline from onboarding to senior technical leader—refining mentorship, management enablement, and performance review cycles on top of existing practice frameworks.

Lead the practice's internal accelerator program alongside the practice lead, defining production-ready client standards, driving practice-wide adoption, and curating internal assets.

Hands-on Delivery and Client Engagement

Maintain an active billable portfolio (~50% focus) across strategic, fractional advisory and platform consulting roles spread intentionally across key client accounts.

Provide overarching technical leadership on AI SDLC initiatives—guiding client leadership in adopting modern AI tooling, setting standards of excellence, and measuring ROI.

Drive robust AI governance solutions within highly regulated industries, establishing comprehensive evaluation frameworks, observability platforms, audit trails, and production safety controls.

Architect enterprise platform and pipeline deployments, including agentic AI frameworks, automated promotion pipelines, and the operational infrastructure supporting them.

Serve as a trusted executive advisor to client engineering leaders, delivering expert guidance and constructively challenging technical approaches when needed.

What We're Looking For (Basic Qualifications)

12+ years of progressive engineering experience, including significant leadership experience guiding full engineering organizations rather than single development teams.

Demonstrated experience managing engineering leaders and managers, with a track record of scaling teams and organizational structures effectively.

Proven ability to build high-functioning organizational infrastructure—recruiting engines, onboarding programs, engineering standards, and career pathways—with measurable outcomes.

Deep technical strength in platform, pipeline, and infrastructure architecture required to command respect and direct technical strategy in executive client settings.

Hands-on expertise deploying production AI/ML systems, with primary focus on platform architecture, MLOps/LLMOps pipelines, governance, and operational resilience over pure model research.

Deep Google Cloud Platform (GCP) experience, or the proven technical agility to master our GCP-centric delivery stack rapidly.

Sharp consulting acumen: adept at managing ambiguity, navigating client-facing dynamics, leading concurrent engagements, and balancing business drivers.

Preferred Qualifications

Professional services experience preferred.

Collaborative mindset and comfort partnering closely with practice leadership during a transitional quarter as operational authority shifts.

Exceptional communication and executive presence, with the ability to influence C-suite client stakeholders and internal executive leadership alike.