Director, Internal AI Operations

LaunchDarkly

10d•$229,000 - $370,480

About The Position

LaunchDarkly is seeking a strategic, execution-oriented Director of Internal AI Operations to run and continuously improve the company’s adoption and scaling of AI. The role establishes operational objectives, processes, and work plans to turn AI tools into a measurable business capability, working with leaders across multiple functions to put the company’s AI direction into practice. The Director builds visibility into AI spending and usage, maintains the company’s AI portfolio, manages internal AI feature reviews, and develops and operationalizes policy and governance. The role tracks AI transformation and migration plans, partners with technology teams on AI initiatives, audits administration and controls, leads communications and enablement, and coordinates a common operating cadence across distributed AI Centers of Excellence while preserving their technical and domain ownership. Success includes measurable improvements in cycle time, throughput, or capacity; demonstrated business value from priority AI use cases; faster and clearer responsible-launch reviews; improved portfolio utilization and cost efficiency; and trusted, scalable governance with clear ownership and consistent controls.

Requirements

15+ years of progressively responsible experience in AI or technology operations, enterprise systems, data and analytics, FinOps, governance, transformation, or a related field, including 5+ years leading teams or complex cross-functional programs.
Demonstrated success designing, implementing, or scaling an operating model across multiple functions, including clear ownership, policies, processes, metrics, governance, and measurable outcomes.
Experience managing an enterprise portfolio of AI or technology tools, vendors, integrations, or platforms, including lifecycle management, access and administration, risk and controls, contracts, usage, and spend.
Strong financial, analytical, and data-driven mindset; experience using tools such as Snowflake, Excel, Python, or equivalent; and ability to define adoption, efficiency, unit economics, ROI, and business-value metrics and turn complex data into executive-ready recommendations.
Strong financial and operational acumen, including experience building spend visibility, forecasts, budget controls, vendor or model-cost optimization, cost avoidance, waste reduction, and value-improvement plans.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex topics clearly, present recommendations to senior and executive leaders, and persuade diverse stakeholders.
Experience influencing functional and technical leaders without relying on direct authority, clarifying distributed accountability, benchmarking performance, challenging tradeoffs, and driving follow-through across global, remote, and cross-functional teams.
Curiosity and willingness to engage with AI: ability to learn emerging capabilities quickly, experiment pragmatically, identify high-value use cases, and apply sound judgment about where AI should and should not be used.
Practical understanding of responsible AI, data governance, privacy, security, vendor risk, and change management, with judgment to balance innovation, control, scalability, and business value.
Strong systems thinking, program management, prioritization, and change leadership skills, and comfort bringing structure to ambiguous, company-wide problems.
Experience hiring, coaching, or developing effective teams and building trusted partnerships across Finance, IT, Security, Legal, Procurement, and business functions.

Responsibilities

Build and maintain visibility into AI spend and usage; develop adoption, efficiency, and cost metrics; report on tool overlap, cost drivers, and open risks; and support Finance with forecasting, budget tracking, anomaly detection, and vendor and model-cost optimization.
Prepare regular reporting and flag performance gaps for follow-up while functional and technical leaders retain ownership of efficiency, waste, cost, usage, and ROI within their portfolios.
Maintain an inventory of AI tools, initiatives, agents, vendors, integrations, owners, status, spend, risks, and dependencies, and establish processes and standards to keep it accurate across teams.
Participate in reviewing new AI vendor requests and own and manage the Internal AI Feature Review process from intake through decision, conditions, approval, exception, or rejection, coordinating with Security, Legal, IT, and business owners.
Develop and maintain the company’s Internal AI Policy and supporting resources with Legal, Security, and the Executive team; recommend policy changes and operationalize approved changes.
Track the AI roadmap, migrations, platform dependencies, adoption milestones, resourcing, risks, and executive decisions.
Collaborate with technology teams on new AI product initiatives and help product teams identify and deliver value around AI.
Define and audit standards for access, ownership, configuration, data controls, logging, retention, vendor settings, and offboarding.
Own the Internal AI communications calendar, stakeholder updates, FAQs, launch materials, training coordination, and policy-change communications.
Establish a common cadence and minimum artifacts across distributed AI Centers of Excellence without centralizing their technical or domain ownership.