Senior Manager Analytics - Artificial Intelligence R&D

Caterpillar Inc.•Peoria, IL

3d•$159,120 - $258,570

About The Position

Cat Digital is hiring a Senior Manager to lead the Advanced Technology Pod within Caterpillar’s AI R&D organization. The role sets the technical vision for applied AI across Caterpillar’s products, dealers, customers, and operators, and shapes a portfolio of high-impact AI initiatives. The pod develops production-intent prototypes and reference architectures for handoff to downstream engineering and platform teams responsible for productionization, MLOps, and ongoing support. The Senior Manager serves as a technical anchor across the Business POC Pod, Long-Term Research Pod, product and engineering groups, and external partners. The role leads senior data scientists and AI engineers, establishes technical and evaluation standards, advances AI research toward practical applications, and represents the pod to AI R&D leadership and Cat Digital executives. The listed salary range is $159,120–$258,570. Visa sponsorship is not available. Offers are conditioned on successful completion of a drug screen.

Requirements

Effective communication skills, including the ability to simplify complex technical topics for executive audiences and communicate a clear applied AI vision.
Solid statistical and experimental rigor for evaluating AI systems and guiding decisions.
Ability to identify high-value AI opportunities and shape them into focused, actionable initiatives.
Experience leading senior technical teams and setting a high technical bar through coaching, feedback, and standards.
Strong partnership skills across product, engineering, and external partners to influence direction and drive alignment.
Prior experience replacing or scaling a senior technical leader’s scope, including stabilizing delivery while raising the technical bar.
Strong system-level thinking across data, models, and integration, with sound architectural trade-off judgment.
Deep understanding of translating research and experimentation into structured, production-intent prototypes and reference architectures.
Strong expertise in modern AI methods, including large language models, generative systems, and advanced machine-learning techniques.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, or a related technical field; an advanced degree is preferred.
Significant experience leading applied AI or AI R&D teams delivering production-intent prototypes and reference architectures for downstream engineering teams.
Strong command of Python-based machine-learning stacks and modern AI frameworks, with a clear point of view on modeling standards, experimentation practices, and prototype quality.
Experience with A/B testing, statistical significance, and rigorous measurement of accuracy, latency, cost, and safety in prototype settings.
Experience partnering with hyperscaler and hardware partners such as AWS, Microsoft and Azure, NVIDIA, or equivalent.
Familiarity with simulation and synthetic environments used to accelerate AI development for physical, real-world systems.
Track record of defining reference architectures, evaluation harnesses, and technical playbooks adopted by downstream engineering and platform teams.
Experience leading or contributing to design thinking and user research for AI experiences serving operators, dealers, or field users.
Background in operator-facing and field-deployed AI experiences.
Strong focus on responsible AI, data classification, and PII handling in line with enterprise compliance expectations.
Exposure to Caterpillar’s products, dealer network, or comparable industrial and equipment ecosystems.

Responsibilities

Set and communicate a technical vision for applied AI at Caterpillar.
Define a focused portfolio of high-impact advanced AI initiatives.
Lead the design and delivery of robust, documented production-intent prototypes and reference architectures for downstream teams.
Define technical standards, patterns, and evaluation criteria that downstream teams can use to productionize AI work.
Partner with the Business POC Pod to move promising use cases from experimentation to production-intent prototypes, and with the Long-Term Research Pod to mature novel methods into applicable techniques.
Lead senior data scientists and AI engineers, including hiring, performance management, technical coaching, career development, and setting modeling and engineering standards.
Align with product management, software engineering, dealers, customers, and external partners, including Microsoft and Azure, NVIDIA, and Airwave.
Establish evaluation practices for AI prototypes, including offline and online testing, benchmarking, model and system trade-off analysis, and responsible AI considerations.
Represent the pod to AI R&D leadership and Cat Digital executives, translating AI work into business outcomes and a credible path forward.