Director, Artificial Intelligence

SI Group•The Woodlands, TX

About The Position

The Director, Artificial Intelligence reports to the Chief Information Officer and leads SI Group’s responsible AI strategy and execution. The role partners with functional leaders to identify business needs, develop a strategic AI roadmap, and deliver solutions that improve employee productivity and manufacturing operations. It establishes and oversees AI governance, aligns AI initiatives with security and regulatory requirements, and measures the business value of AI and automation. This hands-on leadership role contributes directly to designing, developing, and deploying AI models and agents while supporting organization-wide training, adoption, and AI fluency. The Director leads SI Group’s AI Transformation Office, sets enterprise standards and architecture, oversees AI platforms and investments, and builds a team and partnerships to advance responsible, high-value AI capabilities across the company.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in data science, computer science, statistics, engineering, or equivalent experience.
Minimum of 10 years of experience in data science and AI.
Minimum of 5 years of team or program management experience.
Experience with Python, SQL, modern ML frameworks, and cloud ML platforms.

Nice To Haves

Manufacturing experience preferred.

Responsibilities

Set and maintain a multi-year AI strategy tied to enterprise growth priorities, and present it to the executive leadership team.
Own AI policy, risk assessment, and model oversight, including privacy, intellectual property, cybersecurity, and validated manufacturing environments.
Partner with Master Data, Enterprise Applications, Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and OT teams to enable AI use of data from ERP, CRM, MES, plant historians, and lab systems.
Define reference architecture and standards for models, agents, and integrations, including boundaries between IT and OT.
Recruit, develop, and lead a small, senior team; set clear outcomes for partners and service providers.
Own the AI budget, platform spending, and vendor contracts.
Partner with business leaders to redesign business processes around AI.
Lead SI Group’s AI Transformation Office.
Own roadmaps, configuration, licensing, vendor relationships, and costs for AI platforms; decide which tools to standardize on or retire.
Build role-based training, a champions network, and a library of proven use cases for each function and region.
Enable business teams to build assistants and agents within approved platforms, with standards for their connections and automation.
Partner with Cybersecurity, Legal, and Data Governance on acceptable use, data classification, access controls, and prevention of unsanctioned AI tools.
Track platform usage, license utilization, time returned, and employee satisfaction; report results to the executive team.
Maintain an intake of employee ideas and feedback and advance promising ideas into candidates for differentiating capabilities.
Identify, size, and rank AI opportunities with leaders in Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Commercial, R&D, and corporate functions; fund and advance opportunities that deliver ROI.
Design, build, and deploy models and agents from prototype through production at scale across sites, independently and with the team.
Apply forecasting, optimization, anomaly detection, and predictive modeling to yield, quality, asset reliability, energy use, demand, and pricing.
Build agents that reason over company data and act within core systems, targeting multi-step work in areas such as sales, supply chain, formulation, manufacturing, customer service, and regulatory documentation.
Establish MLOps and LLMOps practices for evaluation, monitoring, drift detection, human oversight, cost control, and safe rollback.
Set a baseline for each build, track benefits after go-live, and report EBITDA impact rigorously for Finance and board review.
Select a responsible and efficient approach for each use case and ensure SI Group owns the capability and know-how that create competitive advantage.

Benefits

Competitive medical, dental, and vision packages.
Company contribution to a Health Savings Account.
Cash incentive for annual physical and reimbursement.
Company-paid life insurance and disability plans.
401(k) Retirement Plan with generous company match.
Certified Financial Planning & Investment services.
Generous Paid Time Off.
10 Paid Holidays.
Paid Parental Bonding Leave.
Health and wellness offerings focused on prevention, early detection, and a healthy lifestyle.