Digital Innovation Division Lead of AI Operations

The Digital Innovation Division (DID) is accountable for generating and executing integrated strategies providing governance and managing internal investments that form the foundation of Aerospaces digital transformation.

The Digital Innovation Division is seeking an experienced Operations Lead who can work for the corporations leading voice on AI the AI corporate technical fellow to deliver an AI first digital transformation of the enterprise. This individual would help manage the on time on budget delivery of value for the companys largest AI internal this role you will ground requirements from the Aerospaces customers and engineers to help develop and drive product roadmaps that accelerate the delivery of solutions to the countrys most challenging problems in the space enterprise. You will oversee the full lifecycle of AI Engineering and Integration from data exploitation modeling orchestration and delivery of enterprise scale derivative data products and AI platforms at multiple classification levels. You will be responsible for establishing a modern AI/ML-focused ecosystem that enables teams to reliably build test and deploy AI/ML solutions that power mission-critical applications.

You will lead efforts to define AI architecture standards drive interoperability across platforms and ensure data quality security and compliance at scale. By enabling efficient automated and governed derivative data product delivery pipelines you will ensure Aerospaces digital initiatives are supported by trusted high-quality data that can be rapidly transformed into actionable insights.

Work Model: 100% onsite; Chantilly Colorado Springs El Segundo Huntsville.

What Youll Be Doing

AI/ML Platform Development

• Integrate enterprise AI/ML data standards pipelines and best practices for automated data ingestion transformation validation and delivery with end user workflows applications and data.

• Work with cross-functional teams to design and implement scalable secure and interoperable MLOps architectures aligned with organizational goals.

• Deploy and extend AI/ML platforms across multiple environments including classified networks cloud and hybrid infrastructures.

• Manage cost and schedule for numerous technical teams across platform development.

AI Governance

• Establish processes to ensure AI/ML data quality lineage and compliance throughout the AI/ML cycle (ingest curate consume).

• Collaborate with InfoSec and compliance teams to maintain adherence to AI/ML data governance and regulatory frameworks (e.g. NIST ISO FedRAMP).

Partnering & Infrastructure Management

• Collaboration to select configure and maintain tools for developing Agentic AI architectures that leverage Modeling and Simulation data pipelines and orchestration layers.

• Collaboration to drive adoption of modern cloud-native and integrate Machine Learning services where appropriate.

• Collaboration to integrate the enterprise data management platform to enable seamless data access feature engineering and model training at scale.

Governance & Process Improvement

• Develop and track key AI/ML data metrics and KPIs (e.g. data quality scores pipeline reliability data delivery SLAs).

• Integrate MLOps processes with corporate governance standards to ensure transparency repeatability and efficiency.

• Establish feedback loops with AI consumers to continuously improve performance trust and usability of AI products.

Team Leadership & Collaboration

• Leverage Agile methodologies to manage priorities sprint planning and cross-team collaboration.

• Promote MLOps and Agile best practices and work with data stewards across the organization through demonstrations workshops and training.

Innovation & Continuous Learning

• Stay current with emerging tools architectures industry trends and standards to ensure the organization remains at the forefront of AI engineering and frontier AI tools.

• Champion a culture of continuous improvement knowledge sharing and innovation in data architecture and operations.

What You Need to be Successful

Minimum Requirements: (Senior Project Engineer)

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Statistics Operations Data Science Computer Engineering SW Engineering Information Systems or a related field (or equivalent work experience).

• 10 years in enterprise AI/ML engineering or digital transformation roles including significant experience with data pipelines MLOps and platform integration in regulated environments with at least 2 years in leadership or management demonstrating a proven track record in overseeing complex projects and guiding cross-functional teams.

• Proficiency with AI/ML and orchestration concepts (e.g. Apache Airflow dbt NiFi Talend Kafka Spark Kubernetes).

• Strong understanding of cloud-based data platforms (AWS Azure GCP) most importantly the Azure suite of data management tools (Azure Data Factory Synapse Purview etc.)

• Familiarity with AI governance frameworks compliance standards and security requirements integrated into data pipelines (e.g. NIST AI RMF).

• Strong problem-solving skills with a strategic mindset and the ability to design and evolve enterprise-scale data ecosystems.

• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to bridge technical and mission-focused stakeholders across multiple constituencies.

• Excellent interpersonal skills with a proven track record of fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing across diverse teams.

• Position requires ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance which is issued by the U.S. government. U.S. citizenship is to obtain a security clearance.

How You Can Stand Out

It would be impressive if you have one or more of these:

• Advanced degree in STEM or other technical discipline

• 12 years of experience in AI engineering AI architectures applied AI/ML or data operations with at least 2 years in a leadership or management role.

• Direct mission experience in the national space domain missile defense and/or remote sensing

• Ability to convey the value of applied AI work in mission relevant terms and stories

• Current DoD TS and SSBI/SCI Clearance