About The Position
The Director, AI Innovation & Emerging Capabilities leads the scouting, introduction, and scaling of AI and disruptive digital technologies across R&D. This role serves as the function's primary horizon scanner and innovation translator, converting external signals into concrete R&D opportunities and building structured pathways from early-stage pilots to scaled capabilities. The Director operates with a future-back mindset, ensuring the organization is not caught off-guard by technological disruption but instead positioned to capitalize on it.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in technology strategy, innovation, AI/ML, or digital transformation roles, ideally within or serving R&D-intensive industries
- Demonstrated track record of translating emerging technology trends into adopted value-generating capabilities within a large organization
- Deep knowledge of the current and near-future AI and digital technology landscape, including generative AI, machine learning, agentic systems, and adjacent disruptive technologies
- Experience designing and running pilot programs with defined success criteria, stage-gate governance, and clear pathways to scale
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to senior, non-technical audiences with clarity and conviction
- Comfortable operating with ambiguity; skilled at structuring undefined problem spaces and creating frameworks where none exist
- Strong external network across technology vendors, research institutions, and innovation ecosystems
Responsibilities
- Continuously monitor the external AI and disruptive technology landscape to identify signals, trends, and emerging capabilities with potential R&D relevance
- Maintain a living map of the external innovation environment including academia, startups, vendors, and adjacent industries
- Apply a future-back approach: define where R&D must be in 3–5 years, then work backward to identify the capability gaps and disruptive forces that must be addressed today
- Establish and manage a network of external relationships (research institutes, technology partners, innovation ecosystems) to maintain leading-edge awareness
- Triage and assess emerging threats and opportunities using structured evaluation frameworks before they surface in mainstream discourse
- Translate complex external technology signals into concise, R&D-relevant opportunity briefs that leadership can act on
- Identify and articulate capability gaps between the current R&D operating model and what disruptive trends demand
- Introduce capabilities and approaches that would not organically surface through internal channels, deliberately expanding the organization's aperture of what is possible
- Develop compelling narratives and business cases for disruptive capabilities, tailored to senior R&D and cross-functional audiences
- Design and govern a structured pipeline from exploratory pilot to production-scale capability, with defined stage-gates, success criteria, and go/no-go decision logic
- Lead proof-of-concept and pilot initiatives for high-potential disruptive technologies, ensuring rapid learning cycles and clear value demonstration
- Partner with delivery and product teams to transition successful pilots into scalable, embedded capabilities that measurably improve R&D execution
- Define and track performance metrics demonstrating that disruptive capabilities are delivering tangible, quantifiable impact on R&D outcomes
- Provide R&D leadership with a clear, regularly updated view of the innovation landscape; presenting insights in formats that drive decision-making, not just awareness
- Serve as a credible internal voice on AI and digital disruption, challenging conventional thinking and advocating for proactive capability investment
- Contribute to strategic planning cycles by ensuring innovation foresight is embedded as a structural input, not an afterthought
- Champion a future-back culture within the team, modeling and reinforcing the discipline of working from desired future states toward present-day actions
- Support team operating model design and contribute to intake and prioritization processes
- Shape high-value AI opportunity identification by surfacing externally validated use cases to the portfolio
- Partner with adoption leads to ensure new capabilities are introduced with sufficient user context and change support
Benefits
- For more information on CSL benefits visit How CSL Supports Your Well-being | CSL.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
Education Level
No Education Listed
