Head of AI

Full Time Opportunity

3 days on site in the office

Local Candidates only

Location: New York, NY

Role Overview

The Head of AI is a senior cross-functional leader and hands-on technical leader responsible for defining and executing AI vision, roadmap, and delivery across the platform. This role combines deep individual contribution with executive-level leadership, ensuring AI initiatives are designed, built, and deployed to drive measurable business impact while meeting the highest standards of security, compliance, and responsible AI. This role will report to Chief Product Officer.

This role will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Operations, Security, and Go-To-Market teams to deliver production-grade AI capabilities to enhance internal workflows, power customer-facing features, and strengthen Ninth Wave’s competitive position in regulated financial services.

This is a hands-on senior role that is expected to remain deeply technical and to directly contribute to architecture, prototyping, design reviews, and critical implementation decisions.

Responsibilities

Strategy & Leadership

• Define and own company-wide AI strategy and long-term roadmap, aligned with business objectives and regulatory requirements
• Establish and lead the AI Center of Excellence as an enablement and governance function that accelerates safe, scalable AI adoption
• Identify and prioritize high-impact AI initiatives across product, platform, and operations.
• Communicate AI strategy, progress, and insights to executives, clients, partners, and investors.

Hands-On Technical Leadership

• Serve as a principal individual contributor for AI architecture and system design across the platform
• Architect, prototype, and guide development of AI/ML systems, including LLM-based applications, RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, and ML workflows
• Evaluate, select, and integrate enterprise-grade AI tools, models, and platforms aligned with Ninth Wave’s security and compliance standards
• Lead rapid experimentation and prototyping to validate new AI-driven capabilities and de-risk production deployment
• Define and implement foundations for scalable AI delivery, including model evaluation, monitoring, observability, and lifecycle management
• Conduct deep technical reviews and hands-on problem solving during critical design, performance, and reliability phases

Compliance, Security & Responsible AI

• Define and enforce responsible AI practices, including bias detection, privacy protection, transparency, explainability, and auditability
• Partner closely with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to ensure adherence to financial and regulatory frameworks (FFIEC, OCC, GLBA, and related standards)
• Oversee the development and governance of clean, reliable, and AI-ready datasets within Ninth Wave’s data architecture

Internal Enablement & Product Collaboration

• Drive adoption of AI tools across the organization to improve productivity and effectiveness (engineering acceleration, customer support, sales enablement, risk analytics, and operations)
• Design and deliver internal training and enablement programs focused on AI capabilities, emerging technologies, and responsible usage
• Collaborate with Product and Go-To-Market teams to translate AI capabilities into differentiated offerings, compelling client value propositions, and revenue impact

Team Building & Culture

• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing AI organization, including ML engineers, data scientists, and applied AI practitioners
• Foster a culture of technical excellence, hands-on ownership, secure-by-design thinking, and continuous learning

What Success Looks Like

• Production-grade AI capabilities delivering measurable impact on product differentiation, operational efficiency, and customer value
• Trusted, regulator-aligned AI governance embedded across the organization
• AI systems that are observable, auditable, reliable, and scalable
• A strong AI team operating with clear technical direction and business alignment

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience across data science, machine learning, AI engineering, or applied AI roles, including 3+ years in senior leadership or executive capacity
• Proven track record hands-on building and deploying AI/ML systems in production environments
• Deep expertise in modern AI/ML approaches, including LLMs, multimodal models, vector databases, ML pipelines, and distributed systems
• Experience operating in regulated environments (fintech, banking, financial services, or enterprise SaaS)
• Strong understanding of data privacy, security architecture, and responsible AI frameworks
• Ability to translate complex technical concepts into clear business and customer value
• Exceptional communication, influence, and cross-functional leadership skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with API-driven platforms, data connectivity products, or financial technology ecosystems
• Hands-on familiarity with RAG architectures, agentic workflows, and enterprise AI infrastructure
• Experience designing and delivering organizational AI enablement or training program