Director of Innovation

Southland Industries•Carrollton, TX

15h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Innovation builds and leads Southland’s enterprise innovation capability, establishing a structured, repeatable process to identify business opportunities, evaluate emerging technologies, run disciplined experiments, and scale solutions that deliver measurable value. The role owns the innovation operating model, portfolio, governance, partnerships, and performance measures from idea intake through a decision to scale, stop, or iterate. Initial emphasis is on Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI while developing a broader approach to emerging technologies and new ways of working. The Director works across the business and Technology & Innovation, partnering with the PMO, Change Management, Architecture, Cybersecurity, Legal, Procurement, Finance, Data & Analytics, HR, and business leaders. The role balances experimentation and speed with business accountability and security, legal, financial, architectural, data, and operational considerations. The Director establishes innovation strategy, processes, governance, funding approaches, decision rights, investment criteria, and executive reporting. They manage opportunity intake and portfolio decisions; lead pilots, proofs of concept, prototypes, and other experiments; advance responsible AI and emerging-technology adoption; and define how successful experiments graduate into enterprise delivery and sustained operations. The role also builds internal and external partnerships, develops organizational innovation capability, and measures portfolio performance and realized business value. This is a hybrid role available to candidates located near active Southland locations/sites. The consolidated annual salary range is $161,620 to $246,919, with actual compensation determined by work location and job-related factors. Employment offers are contingent on successful drug tests, background checks, and professional reference checks. Employment sponsorship is not available.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, engineering, innovation, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
10+ years of progressive experience across technology, digital transformation, innovation, product management, strategy, or related disciplines.
Demonstrated experience building or leading innovation, digital, emerging-technology, or transformation capabilities.
Experience taking ideas from concept through experimentation and into scaled implementation.
Strong understanding of AI, Generative AI, automation, data, and emerging-technology trends and their practical business application.
Experience establishing governance, intake, prioritization, experimentation, and portfolio-management processes.
Demonstrated ability to develop business cases, define measurable outcomes, evaluate investments, and communicate recommendations to executives.
Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries and work effectively with business and technology leaders.
Ability to balance innovation speed with security, legal, financial, architectural, data, and operational considerations.

Nice To Haves

Experience in construction, engineering, manufacturing, industrial services, or another asset- and field-intensive environment.
Experience establishing an innovation function or operating model in a complex enterprise.
Experience with enterprise AI and Generative AI adoption, responsible AI governance, and use-case evaluation.
Experience managing innovation ecosystems, technology partnerships, startups, or strategic vendors.
Experience with Agile, product management, design thinking, lean experimentation, or similar methods.
Experience developing and managing innovation investment or funding models.
An advanced degree or relevant innovation, product, strategy, AI, or portfolio credential.

Responsibilities

Establish Southland’s enterprise innovation strategy, operating model, governance, processes, funding approach, and ways of working.
Define innovation roles, decision rights, investment criteria, escalation paths, standards, and guardrails.
Establish and manage an Innovation Steering Committee, including decision criteria, portfolio reviews, meeting cadence, and executive reporting.
Create an innovation lifecycle that moves opportunities from idea through assessment and experimentation to a clear scale, stop, or iterate decision.
Establish an enterprise process for capturing, framing, and evaluating innovation opportunities, including defining the problem, intended outcome, and accountable sponsor.
Evaluate opportunities based on strategic alignment, business value, feasibility, risk, investment, scalability, and organizational readiness.
Maintain visibility into the innovation pipeline, experiments, investments, outcomes, dependencies, and decisions; identify overlapping efforts and recommend which opportunities to advance, pause, pivot, or stop.
Establish a disciplined approach for pilots, proofs of concept, prototypes, and other experiments, with a defined problem, sponsor, hypothesis, success measures, investment requirements, risk review, and decision date.
Enable controlled experimentation through appropriate sandbox environments, data access, and governance mechanisms; drive learning cycles, capture lessons, and prevent pilots from lingering without decisions.
Lead the enterprise approach to evaluating and enabling Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, automation, and other emerging technologies.
Partner with Cybersecurity, Legal, Data, HR, and other stakeholders to establish responsible-use policies, standards, guardrails, and processes for evaluating AI use cases and approving tools.
Monitor technology and market developments and translate trends into practical business implications.
Define graduation criteria for moving successful experiments into production and sustained enterprise delivery.
Partner with the PMO to transition scaled initiatives into the enterprise portfolio for sizing, prioritization, resourcing, funding, and delivery governance.
Partner with Change Management to assess organizational impact and establish adoption approaches for scaled solutions.
Ensure Architecture, Cybersecurity, Legal, Procurement, Data, Finance, and other required stakeholders engage at appropriate lifecycle points.
Establish business ownership, operating support, and benefit accountability before incubation transitions into a sustained capability.
Build relationships with corporate functions, divisions, field operations, and Technology & Innovation leaders to identify opportunities.
Facilitate discovery sessions, workshops, and other mechanisms to help teams identify problems worth solving.
Create accessible channels for employees and leaders to surface ideas while maintaining disciplined investment decisions.
Develop organizational innovation capability through education, communication, experimentation, and sharing proven use cases.
Develop relationships with technology providers, startups, industry organizations, universities, and ecosystem partners where they provide strategic value.
Establish KPIs and executive reporting for the innovation function and portfolio; define success criteria before experiments and track performance.
Monitor pipeline health, experiment cycle time, outcomes, adoption, realized value, reuse and scalability, risk, and investment.
Partner with business owners to quantify benefits and validate whether scaled innovations deliver intended outcomes.
Communicate portfolio performance, lessons learned, emerging opportunities, risks, and investment needs to leadership.

Benefits

401(k) plan with 50% company match (no cap) and immediate 100% vesting
Medical, dental, and vision insurance (100% paid for employee)
Annual bonus program based upon performance, achievement, and company profitability
Term life, AD&D insurance, and voluntary life insurance
Disability income protection insurance
Pre-tax flexible spending plans (health and dependent care)
Paid parental leave
Paid holidays, vacation, and personal time
Training/professional development opportunities
Company-paid memberships for professional associations and licenses