Director Data & AI
About The Position
Ascend Learning, a leading healthcare and learning technology company, is seeking a Director of Data and AI for its National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) brand. This senior leadership role reports to the Chief Information Officer and is responsible for NASM’s data architecture and artificial intelligence capabilities. The role serves as a horizontal function supporting Product, Architecture, and the entire business. The Director will lead the team responsible for building and managing the Snowflake data platform and the production AI/ML use cases that enhance business, member, trainer, and club experiences. Snowflake serves as the data backbone of NASM’s technology, and this role is accountable for the integrity, performance, and trustworthiness of the data estate, including contracts governing data publication from source systems and the semantic layer for self-service analytics. Additionally, the Director will drive NASM’s AI-first business enablement strategy, overseeing the tooling, governance, and adoption necessary for the organization to amplify its capacity, and collaborating with the Product team to integrate AI-powered features for users. A key aspect of this role is establishing AI governance practices, including model risk, responsible AI principles, vendor evaluation, and alignment with Ascend Learning’s enterprise data and AI policy, to manage the proliferation of AI use cases in production.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, statistics, mathematics, engineering, or related field required; Master’s degree preferred.
- 10+ years of progressive experience in data, analytics, or AI/ML; 4+ years of people management.
- Hands-on experience building and operating a modern data platform on Snowflake (or equivalent cloud data warehouse).
- Proven experience deploying machine learning and generative AI use cases to production, including MLOps practices.
- Strong understanding of data governance, data privacy (GDPR, CCPA), and AI governance frameworks.
- Experience with the modern data stack: ingestion (Fivetran, Airbyte), transformation (dbt), orchestration (Airflow, Prefect), and BI (Power BI, Tableau, Looker).
- Experience working in Azure cloud environments preferred, including Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, and Microsoft Fabric.
- Demonstrated ability to build and lead high-performing data and AI teams in a matrixed, MSP-supported delivery model.
- Strong executive communication; able to translate complex data and AI concepts for business stakeholders.
- Experience with responsible AI practices, including model documentation, bias evaluation, and ethical AI considerations.
- A change agent that delivers measurable outcomes for the business through data and AI.
Responsibilities
- Lead and develop the Data and AI team, including a Data Architect, Data Architects and AI/ML Engineer.
- Own NASM’s Snowflake estate, including the data model, data contracts with source systems, performance, cost, and security.
- Establish and continuously evolve the modern data stack: ingestion, transformation (dbt or equivalent), orchestration, semantic layer, and visualization tooling.
- Define and execute the AI/ML strategy, prioritizing production use cases that deliver measurable business value (personalization, content recommendation, churn, study assistance, fraud).
- Establish AI governance for NASM in alignment with Ascend Learning policy: model risk, responsible AI, privacy, model documentation, and AI vendor evaluation.
- Drive the AI-first business enablement program, equipping product, business analysis, architecture, and operations teams with AI tooling, training, and ways of working.
- Align data engineering capacity through a blended in-house and MSP model; partner with the Director of Service Delivery to oversee MSP-delivered data work.
- Partner with Architecture to align the data platform with enterprise architecture standards, integration patterns, and cloud strategy.
- Establish operational metrics for data quality, pipeline reliability, model performance, analytics adoption, and AI use case ROI; report to executive leadership.
- Build the self-service analytics capability that empowers business users while maintaining data governance and trust. Empowering team members with AI capabilities to produce measurable improvements.
- Manage strategic vendor relationships across the data and AI ecosystem (Snowflake, Microsoft, Claude, Azure AI, OpenAI, and others).
Benefits
- Health, dental, and vision insurance
- Company paid life Insurance
- 401(k) with company match
- Paid time off and parental leave
- Employee assistance program
- Other wellness programs such as Headspace and Airvet
- Charitable matching program
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
