Director of Data & AI

Think of Us•Washington, DC

3d•$150,000 - $180,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Think of Us (TOU) is transforming the child welfare system into one where young people and families can heal, develop, and thrive. We drive purpose-driven work aligned with meaningful systems change, powered by data and the insights of lived experience. Our focus is on prevention, keeping families strong before crisis, and on building kinship-first systems so children grow up with people they know and trust. Through bold collaborations with leaders and innovators across the public and private sectors — from Presidential Administrations to local providers — we identify leverage points and co-create solutions that re-architect child welfare for the future. Position Overview Department: Technology & Innovation Reports to: Executive Leadership Direct Reports: Data Engineer, Senior Applied Data Scientist Stack: Python, SQL, Databricks (bronze/silver/gold). AI pipeline on Anthropic Claude + OpenAI, with LangFuse for observability and evaluation. Location: Hybrid; Washington, DC (min. 3 days in the office) Category: Full Time/Exempt As the senior leader for data at Think of Us, you'll be a working player-coach: contributing hands-on alongside the existing data team for the first 6–12 months before growing it further. You're not a pure strategist or a pure manager: you've built a data function before and know how to do the work while building the systems around it. Data is one of TOU's most powerful strategic assets, and none is more central to our mission than the largest dataset of its kind: perspectives from over 51,000 individuals impacted by the child welfare system. As TOU integrates AI across its operations, expands geographically, and deepens its policy and programmatic impact, we need a leader who can turn this proprietary dataset into a durable technical advantage. You'll lead TOU's data function end to end: strategy and architecture, AI and evaluation, analysis and insight, and governance. You'll directly manage the team that delivers this work, today a data engineer and applied data scientist, and grow it over time. Your data team also powers TOU's applications, most centrally ConnectMe, our warmline platform where Care Navigators work directly with youth and families. Its AI pipeline drafts assessments, support plans, and resource matches, always reviewed and owned by a Community Responder before anything reaches a help-seeker. Your team owns the evaluation layer and quality bar that tell us whether any of it is actually working, all within a HIPAA-compliant environment. You'll partner closely with executive leadership on technical direction, with the engineering team on AI infrastructure and quality, and with Product, Design, Program, and Policy leaders on how data informs what we build, ship, and advocate for. We operate as a modern data team: framing the right questions, shipping insights and evaluations into product and policy decisions, and iterating based on what we learn from real-world data.

Requirements

7+ years in data, analytics, or ML roles, with at least 2 years in a leadership or team-building capacity
Direct, hands-on experience with applied AI such as RAG, agents, and LLM evaluation; candidates without this will not be considered
Technically credible: can design data architecture, read and review Python, evaluate AI pipeline quality, and hold substantive technical conversations with engineers
Has built or led a small data team before, in the 2–8 person range; what matters is that you've done it, not the scale
You bring experience working with or alongside systems that impact youth and families — or you’re deeply committed to learning about these systems and approaching the work with humility, curiosity, and care.
You’re motivated by impact and systems change. You thrive in a fast-growing, evolving organization and see change as an opportunity to innovate, learn, and make things better.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Databricks, Delta Lake, or similar modern data lake platforms
Experience with LLM observability and evaluation platforms (LangFuse or similar)
Background in civic tech, public health, human services, or mission-driven organizations
Experience with data governance or HIPAA-adjacent compliance
Prior experience as a player-coach who remained hands-on while building a team

Responsibilities

Define and drive TOU's data strategy and roadmap, anchored on the Lived Experience Engine
Direct the architecture of our Databricks data lake: what goes in each tier, how the data model evolves, and what standards apply
Set standards for data quality, governance, and platform reliability
Translate organizational priorities into data investments and team structure
Build evaluation frameworks (LangFuse plus custom) for TOU's AI pipelines and agents, the systems that tell us whether AI is actually working
Own decisions on when and how TOU goes beyond cloud models: RAG architecture, agent grounding, retrieval quality, and future ML capability
Negotiate the boundary between the data team and Applied AI Engineering on evals and AI data infrastructure
Build and maintain TOU's data governance posture and HIPAA-adjacent compliance standards
Own data access controls, privacy policies, and the ethical framework for lived-experience data
Ensure TOU's handling of sensitive PII from youth in the child welfare system meets legal and ethical standards
Directly manage the data team (currently a Sr. Data Engineer and Sr. Applied Data Scientist), and grow the team over time
Build the processes, culture, and norms of TOU's data function
Be IC-first for 6–12 months, with management load growing as the team grows

Benefits

100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees; 50% for dependents.
Access to Talkspace for confidential therapy and mental health support.
Short-Term Disability, Life, and AD&D Insurance included.
Optional Long-Term Disability and Supplemental Life Insurance.
Health Care and Dependent Care FSAs available.
401(k) Plan for pre-tax retirement contributions.
Work-from-home setup stipend to optimize your workspace.
Flexible PTO policy, plus sick leave and paid leaves of absence.
8 company holidays, plus two organization-wide seasonal breaks.
TOU values continuous learning and invests in the professional development of its employees in alignment with organizational needs based on role, performance, business needs, and Company policies.
Regular organization-wide learning sessions on relevant and reflective topics.