Sr. Director, AI Engineering

How You’ll Contribute The Technology Division creates digital experiences for and delivers information technology services to the National Geographic Society. From our staff to our constituents, Technology provides the power to amplify National Geographic’s impact through value-based product delivery, transformational data services, and world-class support and infrastructure services. These services include employee training and technical support, audio/visual production, device management, enterprise architecture, network management, on-premise and cloud computing, information security, identity management, data management and integration, product management, user experience design, software development, systems engineering, and systems administration. Technology is comprised of five teams: Business Products, Constituent Products, Data Products, Infrastructure & Security, and Technology Support Services. The National Geographic Society is at a pivotal inflection point. While we have experimented with AI, the challenge is now to transition from “AI-curious” to “AI-integrated.” This position plays a key role in the execution of our AI Readiness Plan, which is designed to move the Society from fragmented tooling to a cohesive, secure, and performant enterprise-grade AI ecosystem. The environment is highly collaborative and mission-driven; success requires balancing the rapid pace of innovation with the stringent data integrity and security standards required of a world-class scientific and educational institution. The Senior Director, AI Engineering at the National Geographic Society (NGS) will lead the implementation and operations of the Society’s AI infrastructure under the direction of the Vice President, Deputy Chief Technology and Information Officer. This role will serve as the primary lead in the evaluation and selection of the AI infrastructure components (LLMs, vector databases, management platforms), engaging internal stakeholders in the process. This role will also oversee the creation, operation and ongoing evolution of the Society’s AI governance program. The ideal Senior Director, AI Engineering is a pragmatic, data-driven leader, setting the example and leading the way in measuring the health, performance, and effectiveness of the technology stack they are responsible for as well as the teams they lead. The right candidate will have the experience and leadership skills necessary to grow and mature AI engineering throughout the organization. They work effectively in a highly matrixed Technology organization and work with individuals at all levels of the organization. This role must collaborate closely with leaders in Engineering, Product Management, UX Design, Security, and DevOps in order to be successful. The Senior Director is an evangelist, architect, coach, communicator, expectation manager, facilitator, and diplomat. They report directly to the Vice President, Deputy Chief Technology and Information Officer. Your Impact AI Leadership (40%) Evolve and promote the vision for AI engineering, providing thought leadership and value articulation to Technology and to the greater NGS organization. Act as the lead representative from Technology driving AI governance and implementation, in partnership with the business. Facilitate the development and refinement of AI governance policies, standards, and procedures, including the AI controls framework. Drive the Technology team to continue to improve and refine the governance processes. Establish and enforce guidelines for ethical AI usage by staff and contractors, including rigorous assessment of model bias, data privacy, and the protection of National Geographic’s intellectual property rights when interacting with third-party foundation models. Collaborate with executives, managers, and teams across the organization to understand and define business needs. Monitor operational trends and technology innovations to anticipate change, minimize risk, and identify opportunities for growth. Identify the opportunities for AI engineering value delivery that best balance the Society’s mission requirements, engineering capability and organizational readiness. Planning, Design & Delivery (40%) Guide the design, development, and delivery of AI infrastructure and engineering stack components under the direction of the VP, Deputy CTIO. Establish AI performance standards in terms of latency, reliability, and scalability and implement methods to validate whether AI software releases adheres to these standards. In collaboration with peers, create the environment for safe and successful adoption of the AI Engineering stack within Technology, including implementing the AI controls framework. Work with architects and lead engineers to provide broad technical and architectural direction to development teams. Work with the Information Security Team to establish and enforce information security standards and procedures for AI software development, AI products, and AI engineering. Maintain and regularly present the AI infrastructure and engineering stack roadmap to executives, managers, and teams across the organization. Define and track success metrics that demonstrate alignment with and progress with the Society’s AI Readiness Plan. Measurement includes ecosystem success metrics, assessing the fitness of the platform, reliability and performance. Work with cloud operations personnel to implement practices to monitor, forecast, and optimize the unit cost of AI inference and training. Work with the CTIO and VP, Deputy CTIO to establish accountability for cloud spend transparency and ROI analysis for all AI-enabled features. Management & Culture (20%) Manage risks and navigate organizational processes and structures to remove obstacles. Estimate costs and manage spending to conform to budget forecasts. Execute and manage contracts with all AI technology and service vendors. Partner with the CTIO and the rest of Technology leadership to champion, evolve, and refine a strong agile culture. Maintain an environment of psychological safety, enabling team members to thrive. What You’ll Bring Educational Background A bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field is preferred. Equivalent experience is acceptable. Minimum Years And Type Of Experience 12+ years of experience in the information technology field with at least 5 or more years of software engineering management experience. At least 3 years of experience overseeing the construction or maintenance of enterprise-grade platforms, across all phases of its lifecycle, from prototyping through launch. Necessary Knowledge And Skills Strong track record leading the design, development, and delivery of scalable, cloud-based enterprise-grade computing platforms. Solid understanding of prevalent AI concepts and technologies including machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLM), retrieval augmented generation (RAG), and model context protocol (MCP). Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders without direct reporting authority, navigating complex organizational structures to align disparate departments on common AI standards. Strong working knowledge of service-oriented architectures, microservices architectures, event-driven architectures, as well as lambda and kappa architectures. Solid grasp of data lineage, data governance, and data quality standards, recognizing that high-quality AI outputs require high-quality enterprise data. Extensive experience with agile software development methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban, including working with remote and hybrid teams. Exceptional organizational, product and project management skills, including the ability to plan, schedule, and successfully execute multiple workstreams at the same time to a successful conclusion. Experience negotiating enterprise-level agreements with cloud hyperscalers and software companies. Active listener with strong written and verbal communication skills. Excellent leadership, management, and team-building skills. Able to attract, mentor, and develop staff to ensure skills align and adapt to the mission and business goals. Able to inspire and motivate others by example, and achieve positive outcomes through a balance of strong leadership and open collaboration. Desired Qualifications Recent experience working with software engineering teams actively adopting AI-supported practices. Experiencing successfully integrating commercial off-the-shelf products like Workday and Salesforce with custom software. Familiarity with Open Agile Architecture concepts and practices. Supervision: None Salary Information The National Geographic Society offers a competitive and holistic total rewards package. Our compensation structure and transparent pay philosophy are based on industry-specific market data for similar-sized nonprofit organizations. The salary range for this position accounts for a wide range of factors including but not limited to organizational need; specific skill sets; experience and training; certifications; and more. At the National Geographic Society, individuals are typically hired at or near the starting point of the salary range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. The salary range for this position is $247,000.00 - $260,000.00. medical, dental, and vision insurance engaging and comprehensive wellness program 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching contributions after 6 months of employment flexible paid time off benefits with up to 22 days of paid annual leave per calendar year (15 days for new hires in their first year, prorated based on the number of pay periods remaining in the year) 12 paid holidays and a paid winter break between December 25 and 31 (May not apply to all roles that are required to work during high volume seasons or essential workers. Please check with the hiring manager for confirmation.) paid parental leave, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility benefits learning and development opportunities Lifestyle Spending Account pet adoption assistance and insurance pre-tax transportation benefits with a generous employer subsidy employer-paid life insurance and disability benefit #J-18808-Ljbffr National Geographic Society