Senior Director, AI & Software Engineering

Are you a Senior AI & Software Engineering leader motivated to advance responsible, enterprise AI at an organization committed to trust, rigor, and global impact? In this role, you will shape the architecture, platforms, and engineering standards that power AI-enabled products and services across the organization. You’ll lead multidisciplinary teams and partners to deliver secure, scalable AI capabilities while advancing CFA Institute’s AI maturity and innovation culture.

The Senior Director, AI & Software Engineering is a senior technical and people leader responsible for the engineering stewardship, architectural integrity, and operational excellence of CFA Institute’s artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms. The role provides strategic and technical leadership for enterprise AI ecosystems, including model development, MLOps platforms, data pipelines, and AI-enabled products and services.

This role interprets complex as-is and to-be AI system landscapes, drives major AI transformation initiatives, and ensures the responsible, secure, and scalable deployment of AI capabilities across the organization. The Senior Director leads multi-disciplinary AI engineering teams and strategic partners, establishes engineering standards and governance, and advances CFA Institute’s AI maturity, innovation capacity, and engineering culture.

The position may be based in approved jurisdictions in the United States and is eligible for flexible work arrangements.

What You’ll Do

• Lead execution of CFA Institute’s AI and data engineering roadmap, including platforms, MLOps, and AI-enabled products.

• Serve as enterprise steward for AI engineering platforms, ensuring alignment with architecture and responsible AI principles.

• Translate emerging AI technologies into scalable, production-grade business solutions.

• Own platform engineering outcomes, operating discipline, and technical coherence across strategic initiatives.

• Establish and enforce AI engineering standards for quality, explainability, bias mitigation, performance, reliability, and monitoring.

• Oversee MLOps and Dev Sec Ops , including model CI/CD, feature management, observability, and lifecycle automation.

• Manage a portfolio of AI engineering initiatives, ensuring predictable delivery, quality, and risk management.

• Lead AI-related incident response, vulnerability management, and remediation.

• Partner with Product, Data, Legal, Risk, and business leaders to ensure ethical, compliant AI deployment.

• Build organizational capability through AI talent development, coaching, and knowledge sharing.

• Lead and develop high-performing AI engineering teams with a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

• Manage strategic vendors and partners to ensure quality, continuity, and value realization

What You’ll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree required; master’s degree or equivalent experience in computer science, data science, AI, or related field preferred.

• 10–15+ years of progressive experience in software, data, or AI engineering, including enterprise-scale platforms.

• 3–6+ years of experience leading and managing senior engineering teams and complex delivery portfolios.

• Demonstrated experience delivering production-grade AI solutions at scale.

• Strong understanding of responsible AI, model governance, and regulatory considerations.

• Exceptional communication, analytical, and leadership skills.

• Proven ability to partner effectively with engineering, security, and business stakeholders at senior levels

• Strong strategic thinking and roadmap development skills

• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing capabilities

• Deep understanding of balancing security, compliance, and customer experience

• Outstanding communication, problem solving, and analytical skills

• High level of organizational agility and ability to manage complex, interdependent priorities

At CFA Institute, we are committed to transparency and equity in our hiring process. In compliance with wage transparency laws in many of the jurisdictions in which we recruit, we provide the following information regarding compensation for this position:
Expected salary range: $140,700 - $280,000 per year. All salary ranges are…