Applied AI Director (Primarily Office)

This position provides strategic leadership for applied AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics solutions that drive business performance and operational effectiveness. You will partner with business and technology leaders to define enterprise AI strategy and build the production-grade capabilities, ensuring solutions are valuable, adopted, responsible, and aligned to enterprise priorities. This Director will also lead teams responsible for applied AI solution delivery, process-level AI transformation, business-domain partnership, model and solution quality, shared AI product lifecycle execution, portfolio delivery, and continuous improvement of AI-enabled products and workflows. You will also work across Technology and business domains, including Information Security, Governance, Enterprise Architecture, Application Development, Digital Services, Infrastructure, Data Engineering, Product, Operations, Risk, Legal, and Compliance partners. The role also partners with external delivery, consulting, academic, and research partners.

Position Compensation Range:

$172,000.00 - $294,000.00

Pay Rate Type:

Salary

Compensation may vary based on the job level and your geographic work location. Relocation support is offered for eligible candidates.

Primary Accountabilities

• Lead applied AI solution delivery
  • You will direct the development and delivery of applied AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics solutions that address high-value business problems.
  • Ensure solutions are production-oriented, maintainable, measurable, and aligned to enterprise priorities.
• Advance process-level AI transformation
  • You will partner with business and Technology leaders to identify, assess, and redesign high-value workflows where AI can improve speed, quality, consistency, cost-to-serve, or customer/employee experience.
  • You will also assist teams connect individual AI capabilities into coherent business process journeys rather than isolated point solutions.
• Shape AI opportunities and portfolio alignment
  • Partner with business, Technology, product, portfolio, and operations leaders to identify and prioritize applied AI opportunities.
  • Remain in tune with frontier/evolving AI capabilities and emerging research in order to inform the approaching opportunities and long-term strategy.
  • Translate ambiguous business needs into actionable AI solution opportunities, delivery roadmaps, and measurable outcomes.
• Lead applied science and solution quality
  • Provide leadership over applied modeling, AI solution design, prompt and agentic workflow patterns, experimentation design, validation, and solution evaluation.
  • You will ensure teams use appropriate scientific, statistical, engineering, and product practices for the problem being solved.
• Partner on AI product lifecycle management
  • You will work with business owners, product and portfolio leaders, AI Platform Engineering, and external delivery partners to shape AI product lifecycle practices from idea through production, adoption, continuous improvement, and retirement.
  • Clarify lifecycle responsibilities across business, Applied AI, AI Platform Engineering, and delivery partners so accountability is shared and sustainable.
• Drive value realization and adoption
  • Define success measures for AI solutions and ensure delivered capabilities are adopted, measured, iterated, and connected to business impact.
  • Help business partners move from AI awareness to operational use and sustained value.
• Develop reusable AI solution patterns
  • You will identify repeated solution patterns across domains and partner with AI Platform Engineering to convert them into reusable frameworks, components, and delivery accelerators.
  • Reduce one-off builds where shared approaches can improve speed, quality, governance, and long-term supportability.
• Ensure operational handoff and ongoing solution improvement
  • You will design applied AI solutions with supportability, escalation paths, and operational handoff in mind.
  • Partner with AI Platform Engineering and business/product owners on L3 enhancements, bug fixes, upgrades, and solution-level improvements after production release.
• Embed responsible AI and evaluation discipline
  • Embed responsible AI practices into applied AI delivery in alignment with enterprise governance expectations.
  • Partner with business, governance, and platform teams to define domain-specific evaluation criteria that reflect standards for quality, accuracy, compliance, fairness, customer experience, and business usefulness.
• Lead people and develop talent
  • Build and lead high-performing teams of data scientists, applied AI practitioners, and related specialists aligned with enterprise strategy.
  • Set clear priorities, coach leaders and individual contributors, and create a collaborative, performance-driven, inclusive environment.

Specialized Knowledge & Skills Requirements

• Demonstrated experience delivering AI, machine learning, or advanced analytics solutions into production business workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to connect AI capabilities to measurable business outcomes and enterprise priorities.
• Demonstrated experience leading process-level transformation, not only technology implementation.
• Strong understanding of applied AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, experimentation, validation, and production adoption.
• Experience with AI product lifecycle practices in a shared ownership model across business, data science, platform, product, portfolio, and external delivery partners.
• Demonstrated experience partnering across Information Security, Governance, Enterprise Architecture, Application Development, Digital Services, Infrastructure, Data Engineering, Product, Operations, Risk, Legal, Compliance, and business teams.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical concepts, tradeoffs, risks, and implications to non-technical and executive audiences.
• Experience managing or partnering with external research, consulting, academic, or delivery partners.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, emerging technology, growth, and organizational change.
• Demonstrated effective people leadership, coaching, prioritization, and talent development skills.

Key Interfaces and Partners

• Business executives, business product owners, domain leaders, and operations teams.
• AI Platform Engineering for reusable technical patterns, MLOps/LLMOps, LLM pipeline frameworks, agentic workflow frameworks, deployment paths, observability, platform capabilities, production support patterns, and L3 enhancement partnership.
• BI Engineering & Enablement for shared metrics, semantic context, BI consumption, trusted analytics foundations, and AI-consumable business context.
• Data Engineering for data pipelines, curated data, AI-ready data assets, and domain data foundations.
• Information Security, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, Application Development, Digital Services, Cloud, Privacy, Legal, Compliance, Model Risk, AI Governance, and Data Governance.
• Product, program, and portfolio leaders for prioritization, operating model alignment, delivery orchestration, and value realization.
• External and contractor partners where they support applied AI delivery or operating model execution.
• UW-Madison Data Science Institute and other external innovation or research partners

Additional Information

• To ensure a strong start, all employees participate in our New Employee Orientation during their first week.  This experience is held in person at our Madison, WI Headquarters or one of our AmFam core locations to help you connect with our mission, meet key team members and build relationships that support your growth.  At times, sessions may be delivered virtually based on scheduling and availability. 
• Offer to selected candidate will be made contingent on the results of applicable background checks
• Offer to selected candidate is contingent on signing a non-disclosure agreement for proprietary information, trade secrets, and inventions
• Sponsorship will not be considered for this position unless specified in the posting

In this primarily office-based role, you will be expected to spend at least 80% of your time (4+ days per week) working from the office. Candidates should reside within approximately 35-50 miles of one of the following office locations: Madison, WI 53783 or Boston, MA 02110.

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We provide benefits that support your physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. You will have access to comprehensive medical, dental, vision and wellbeing benefits that enable you to take care of your health. We also offer a competitive 401(k) contribution, a pension plan, an annual incentive, 9 paid holidays and a paid time off program (23 days accrued annually for full-time employees). In addition, our student loan repayment program and paid-family leave are available to support our employees and their families. Interns and contingent workers are not eligible for American Family Insurance Group benefits.

We are an equal opportunity employer. It is our policy to comply with all applicable federal, state and local laws pertaining to non-discrimination, non-harassment and equal opportunity. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

American Family Insurance is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. If a reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please email [email protected] to request a reasonable accommodation.

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