AVP, AI COE Leader (Hybrid)

Selective Insurance Company of America•Hartford, CT

19h•$184,000 - $249,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Selective Insurance is seeking an AVP to lead its new AI Center of Excellence (COE). This role is responsible for operationalizing the company's enterprise AI strategy by identifying AI needs, researching innovations, accelerating adoption, and directing the design and delivery of AI capabilities. The position manages a cross-functional team of AI architects and engineers, as well as dotted-line relationships with AI Leads, legal, and regulatory contacts. The role also involves managing COE engagement with business units through Forward Deployed AI Leads and providing senior-level engagement with business unit executive leadership. The AVP will serve as the primary relationship owner between the COE and IT application delivery and enterprise governance bodies, ensuring AI investments align with organizational priorities, are measured for business impact, and are governed according to risk and regulatory requirements.

Requirements

Knowledge of artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts, architectures, and platforms relevant to enterprise insurance operations, including large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, AI agent design patterns, and model evaluation.
Knowledge of property and casualty insurance operations, including underwriting, pricing, claims handling, and regulatory compliance.
Ability to plan, manage, and report on a portfolio of concurrent AI initiatives with competing priorities, constrained resources, and cross-functional dependencies.
Ability to lead enterprise change management for AI adoption, including stakeholder engagement, communication strategy, behavioral reinforcement, and measurement of adoption and organizational readiness.
Understanding of enterprise data strategy, data quality, metadata management, and the relationship between data foundations and AI capability, including structured data, unstructured content, and enterprise knowledge access.
Ability to build and manage cross-functional teams across technical, governance, and business-facing disciplines, including managing through influence via dotted-line and matrixed relationships.
College degree preferred in Computer Science, Business, or related field.
Minimum of ten years of progressive experience in technology, data, analytics, or AI roles, with at least five years in a leadership capacity managing cross-functional teams and enterprise-scale programs.
Minimum of three years of experience in property and casualty insurance, financial services, or a closely related regulated industry.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading AI, machine learning, or advanced analytics programs with hands-on involvement in production AI deployments is preferred.

Responsibilities

Leads operationalization of the enterprise AI program under the direction of the SVP, Enterprise Strategy & Execution, including setting priorities, coordinating cross-functional AI activity, and reporting on portfolio status, value realization, and risk.
Responsible for the daily leadership of the AI COE team across strategy, engineering, governance, and enablement functions.
Directs the research, design, engineering, and delivery of reusable enterprise AI capabilities, including retrieval-augmented generation infrastructure, AI agent orchestration frameworks, core insurance system integration layers, enterprise knowledge pipelines, and evaluation frameworks, ensuring production readiness, security, and alignment to enterprise AI reference architecture.
Monitors the external market for AI innovation and available technology.
Proactively identifies enterprise-level AI capability needs and patterns by analyzing business unit demand, emerging technology opportunities, and cross-BU commonalities — not solely relying on intake submissions.
Owns the enterprise AI portfolio by operating standardized intake and evaluation processes, aggregating portfolio status and value realization data from Forward Deployed AI Leads and other sources, and maintaining a comprehensive portfolio dashboard.
Establishes performance indicators and measurement methodologies, designs controlled rollout approaches, and produces evidence-based recommendations to scale, refine, pause, sequence, or retire AI initiatives.
Prepares decision-support materials for the AI Steering Committee and executive leadership.
Manages the COE's engagement with business units through a team of Forward-Deployed AI Leads embedded within each business unit.
Provides senior-level engagement with business unit VPs and Product Owners on strategic alignment, portfolio priorities, and the resolution of escalations.
Coaches and supports Forward Deployed AI Leads in shaping use cases, managing business unit relationships, and driving adoption.
Manages the collaborative relationship with IT and Application Development to ensure clear ownership boundaries, coordinate on agent framework decisions and API development for core insurance systems, and resolve technical direction or resource contention issues.
Coordinates AI governance in partnership with the AI & Model Governance Committee, Legal, and Compliance, ensuring AI deployments comply with the Written Artificial Intelligence System Program, meet regulatory requirements, and maintain appropriate audit trails, human oversight controls, and guardrails for AI agent actions.
Oversees enterprise AI enablement and adoption, including engineering upskilling, role-based business training, and change management initiatives that build effective human-AI collaboration in core insurance workflows.
Provides strategic direction for the GenAI Alliance and AI Champions network, with Forward Deployed AI Leads serving as the day-to-day leaders of business unit AI Champions cohorts.
Incorporates feedback from Forward Deployed AI Leads on training effectiveness, gaps, and business-unit-specific needs to continuously improve enterprise enablement programs.
Trains, supervises, assigns work to, evaluates, and is responsible for hiring and retention of COE staff, including Forward Deployed AI Leads embedded in business units and centrally based AI architects and engineers.
Manages a network of formal dotted-line relationships with data organization liaisons, application development partners, and legal and regulatory contacts.
Manages AI vendor and partner relationships, evaluating vendor-driven opportunities against COE criteria, overseeing external AI engineering partners, ensuring knowledge transfer to internal teams, and coordinating vendor engagement with procurement, legal, and IT.