Head of Data & AI

Aerdf•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

AugmentED, an AERDF-supported AI and education initiative, seeks a Head of Data + AI to lead the strategy and technical foundations that power our research and products. You'll build the reusable data models, infrastructure, and AI frameworks that underpin our R&D efforts, translate research into scalable tools and platforms, and lead collaborations across internal teams and university partners. We're looking for a hands-on technical leader with deep expertise in AI and data science, experience turning cutting-edge research into reusable technologies, and a passion for creating technology that expands opportunity in education. About AugmentED Founded in January 2025, AugmentED partners with expert educators, researchers, and engineers to reimagine education for the AI era. Our mission is to fuse the strengths of AI and human educators to improve learning outcomes, especially for underserved elementary and high school students. We believe the best way to do this is by bringing expert educators, engineers, and researchers together to co-design and test new models of teaching and learning and AI-powered tools that make these new approaches possible. Grounded in the belief that human teachers and AI each offer unique strengths, we work to blend the best of both to make education more engaging, personalized, and relevant to the modern world. As a field-building initiative, we aim not only to develop new education approaches, AI-powered tools, and research insights, but also to codify and scale our processes that enable educators, researchers, and engineers to drive innovation collaboratively. About AERDF The Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF) is a national nonprofit that unlocks scientific breakthroughs, new inventions, and cutting-edge research to solve the most pressing teaching and learning challenges in PreK–12 education. Through our Advanced Inclusive Research and Development (R&D) model, we unite educators, caregivers, learners, scientists, and technologists to discover research-backed solutions that push the limits of what’s believed to be possible in education.We build the infrastructure, partnerships, and momentum needed to move discoveries from idea to impact, so every student can thrive in a rapidly changing world. Learn more at www.aerdf.org

Requirements

Strong experience as a data scientist or applied AI/ML leader who has designed and deployed data models, algorithms, and AI systems that power real-world products.
Desire to be both a hands-on contributor and a technical leader, providing guidance, mentorship, and direction across a distributed network of researchers, engineers, and technical contributors.
Deep knowledge of machine learning, AI, statistics, and modern data infrastructure, with experience designing extensible data architectures and technical foundations for future growth.
Demonstrated ability to lead the development of reusable data models, algorithms, and technical frameworks that extend beyond a single project or use case.
Experience partnering closely with software engineering teams to productionize AI and data science work, ensuring models integrate into scalable, reliable user-facing products.
Strong understanding of the end-to-end AI development lifecycle, including data pipelines, model development, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and the technical tradeoffs required for production systems.
Experience building and maintaining technical foundations that enable collaboration across research, engineering, and product teams, including defining requirements, communicating technical constraints, and aligning stakeholders around a shared technical vision.

Nice To Haves

Experience in educational research, learning science, or ed-tech environments.
Experience partnering with academic researchers, universities, or interdisciplinary research teams.

Responsibilities

Lead the development of reusable data modeling approaches and robust technical infrastructure.
Build out the shared libraries, models, and open-source frameworks upon which our educational prototypes are built.
Transform bespoke or lab-based implementations into generalizable solutions across multiple products.
Identify new technical approaches that de-risk innovation and accelerate the R&D process.
Ensure data science initiatives accelerate our shared goals and technical consistency across the AugmentED ecosystem.
Partner closely with the engineering team to integrate research-grade models into the core AugmentED platform.
Ensure that data modeling approaches are architected to be modular and deployable within the platform infrastructure established by the engineering team.
Grow and manage a high-performing team of 3–6 data science consultants (a mix of grad students, postdocs, and faculty).
Foster a culture of excellence, equity, and collaborative problem-solving.
Serve as a technical bridge, facilitating effective collaborations between AugmentED teams, university researchers, and educators.