Lead AI Delivery Manager — Federal

DataRobot•Washington, DC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Lead AI Delivery Manager on the DataRobot Federal Professional Services team, you are the primary owner of client engagement, technical delivery, and long-term relationship health across a portfolio of federal government customers. You are a trusted advisor who bridges the gap between what our customers need and what DataRobot can deliver — guiding agencies through complex AI adoption journeys with the credibility of a seasoned consultant and the accountability of a program manager. You will own the full customer lifecycle for your assigned accounts: from early engagement and solution scoping, through delivery execution and stakeholder alignment, to expansion and renewal. You will be the face of DataRobot to the customer — building executive relationships, managing delivery risk, and ensuring that commitments made in the sales cycle are met with rigor and professionalism in the field. While you will bring sufficient technical depth to credibly engage with government IT teams, architects, and data teams, your primary value is not as a hands-on engineer. It is as a strategic delivery leader who can orchestrate the right internal and partner resources, navigate federal procurement and compliance requirements, and translate complex AI capabilities into clear, mission-relevant value for senior government stakeholders.

Requirements

7+ years of professional services, management consulting, or technical advisory experience in federal or defense markets.
Proven track record leading complex, multi-stakeholder engagements from discovery through delivery, and have served as the primary relationship owner for government program offices at the GS-15 / SES / O-6 level and above.
Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous agency requirements into concrete, scoped engagements with clear deliverables, timelines, and success criteria.
Comfortable leading whiteboard sessions, facilitating working groups, and producing professional SOWs and technical proposals.
Outstanding written and oral communication skills. Ability to command a room of senior government officials, distill complex AI concepts for non-technical audiences, and produce polished executive briefings, status reports, and program reviews.
PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, ICAgile, or equivalent experience managing technology delivery programs in federal environments.
Ability to build and maintain detailed project plans, run structured status cadences, and proactively surface risks before they become escalations.
Experience managing concurrent delivery tracks involving internal DataRobot teams, government IT staff, systems integrators, and subcontractors.
Ability to allocate resources, sequence dependencies, and keep programs on schedule when priorities shift.
Ability to maintain a living risk register, distinguish between issues that need immediate escalation and those that can be managed in-stream, and communicate status to leadership with clarity and appropriate urgency.
Comfortable operating within federal program management frameworks including Agile/SAFe and CDRL deliverable structures.
Experience with contract vehicles such as JWCC, GSA Schedule, and OTA is a plus.
Ability to monitor leading indicators of account health (usage, satisfaction, engagement breadth) and intervene proactively when risk signals emerge.
Consistently identify new use cases, stakeholders, and funding streams that could deepen DataRobot’s footprint within existing accounts.
Ability to proactively surface opportunities to introduce agentic AI solutions — orchestrating multi-step, mission-aligned workflows that move customers beyond standalone predictions and toward measurable operational impact.
Ability to partner closely with your Sales counterpart to convert delivery success into commercial momentum.
Ability to maintain a detailed understanding of the decision-making landscape within your accounts — who the champions are, who the skeptics are, and how to build coalitions across program offices, budget holders, and CIO organizations.
Working familiarity with AI/ML methodologies, lifecycle, and platforms, MLOps concepts, and the infrastructure considerations for deploying AI in federal environments.
Working knowledge of Python sufficient to engage in meaningful reviews of developer code.
Working knowledge of the ATO lifecycle, Risk Management Framework (RMF), FedRAMP authorization processes, and IL5/IL6 deployment requirements for classified networks.
Sufficient familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government) and common federal data architectures to guide scoping conversations and identify integration complexity early.
Demonstrated experience scoping and delivering agentic AI solutions in production — including multi-step agent workflows, tool-calling integrations, and human-in-the-loop oversight — ideally for federal or other regulated customers.
Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Engineering, Business, or a related field; advanced degree or MBA a plus.
Must be a U.S. citizen.
Must have an active TS/SCI clearance.
CI Poly clearance preferred.

Nice To Haves

PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM, or SAFe certification.
Prior experience as a management or technical consultant at a firm with a federal practice (e.g., Booz Allen, Deloitte Federal, Accenture Federal, SAIC, Leidos).
Demonstrated experience growing federal accounts year-over-year through proactive land-and-expand strategies.
Familiarity with DataRobot or comparable enterprise AI/ML/data platforms (H2O, SAS Viya, Dataiku, Palantir, Databricks).
Experience working within or alongside NGA program offices.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect or similar cloud certification.

Responsibilities

Own the customer relationship end-to-end — serving as the primary point of contact and trusted advisor for executive, program, and technical stakeholders across your account portfolio.
Lead technical project delivery with rigor — develop and manage detailed project plans, track milestones, surface and mitigate risks, and hold both internal teams and customer counterparts accountable to agreed commitments.
Translate customer mission needs into DataRobot solutions — conducting discovery, identifying use cases with the highest ROI, and structuring engagements that deliver measurable outcomes.
Drive account growth and retention — identify expansion opportunities, support renewal conversations, and partner with Sales to build a compelling business case for continued and expanded investment in DataRobot.
Lead compliance with security requirements including ATO processes and IL5, IL6 and TS authorization timelines.
Navigate federal procurement including agency-specific acquisition vehicles (e.g., JWCC, Tradewinds, GSA Schedule, OTA).
Provide consultative architecture guidance — engaging federal IT and data teams on integration patterns, platform deployment approaches, and data pipeline design, while knowing when to bring in deeper technical specialists.
Serve as the voice of the customer internally — synthesizing field learnings and customer feedback to inform Product, Engineering, and Sales priorities for the Federal market.
Support pre-sales activities — participating in customer discovery, scoping professional services engagements, contributing to proposals, and presenting at executive briefings.
Mentor and coordinate partner delivery resources — overseeing subcontractors and SI partners engaged on customer programs, ensuring quality and consistency of delivery.