Vice President, AI Platform & Engineering

IHG•Atlanta, GA

4h•$257,000 - $375,000•Hybrid

About The Position

AI is not the future of enterprises -- it's the present, and the gap between companies that move boldly and those that hesitate is widening fast. We are looking for a Vice President of AI Platform & Engineering who doesn't just manage technology — who builds the engine that transforms how an enterprise operates, competes, and creates value. This is a rare opportunity to architect something that matters: a production-grade, enterprise-scale AI platform and business initiatives that move at the speed of possibility. This leader will own the full spectrum — from AI infrastructure and GenAI lifecycle to agentic platform delivery, and the human side of adoption that determines whether technology becomes transformation. You won't be handing off to someone else. You'll be in it. What You'll Own Enterprise AI Platform Strategy & Delivery Define and own the enterprise strategy for a secure, unified agentic AI platform built on Google Cloud Platform — the foundation that powers how AI gets built, deployed, and adopted across the organization. This means establishing a GCP-native architecture with reusable patterns, reference architectures, and platform services that teams across the business can confidently build on. Curate and standardize the AI tooling ecosystem — from agent development and vector stores to orchestration frameworks, prompt management, and evaluation tooling — so engineers spend time building, not assembling. Drive adoption not by mandate but by making the platform the obvious choice — intuitive, reliable, governed, and fast. You set the AI engineering bar. Then you raise it. AI Lab & Continuous Innovation Establish and lead an enterprise AI Lab that serves as the innovation engine for the future of hospitality — a dedicated space for rapid prototyping, emerging technology exploration, and high-velocity experimentation before ideas are ready for production. Design and run an AI Rotational Program that brings together internal product teams, universities, and startups to sustain a continuous pipeline of fresh thinking, external perspective, and applied innovation. The Lab isn't a sandbox. It's where the next platform capabilities get born. Applied AI Delivery at Scale Own the end-to-end delivery of high-impact, cross-functional AI use cases that fundamentally change how colleagues work — not incremental improvements, but big-rock transformations that reshape workflows, decisions, and outcomes at enterprise scale. Partner deeply with business, product, and operations leaders to identify where AI creates the most asymmetric value — and then build it, ship it, and prove it. Lead the translation of complex AI capabilities into production-ready solutions that non-technical stakeholders can trust and depend on daily. This isn't a consulting role. You are accountable for outcomes, not recommendations. Responsible AI & Governance Operationalize AI governance that's both rigorous and enabling — not a checkpoint at the end of the process, but a discipline embedded from day one. Define and enforce model risk controls, data lineage, audit readiness, and GenAI guardrails that hold up under regulatory scrutiny and executive oversight. Partner closely with security, risk, compliance, and data governance leaders to build frameworks that scale as the platform scales. Establish clear accountability structures for model approval, ongoing monitoring, and incident response — so when questions arise, the answers already exist. Enterprise Adoption & Organizational Leadership AI only creates value when people use it — confidently, repeatedly, and at scale. Drive adoption by building the conditions that make it inevitable: self-service platform & tooling capabilities that lower the barrier to entry, communities of practice that spread expertise organically, and AI fluency programs that meet colleagues where they are. Partner with product, tech, data, and business leaders not as a service provider but as a strategic co-creator. Attract and develop engineering talent that is technically elite and deeply mission-driven. Build the kind of team that sets the standard — and then raises it. Who You Are You are not a vendor of ideas. You are a builder of systems — and you've done it before, at scale, in complex enterprise environments where the stakes were real.

Requirements

15+ years of progressive technology leadership, with a track record of building and operating enterprise platforms in production
Hands-on GenAI and AI/ML depth — you understand foundation models, prompt engineering, RAG architectures, fine-tuning, and evaluation frameworks from the inside out, not just the slide deck
LLMOps fluency — you've built or led the infrastructure that keeps AI models healthy, observable, and accountable in production
GCP stack experience preferred— but what matters more is cloud architecture depth and the willingness to go deep on our stack
Enterprise change leadership — you know how to earn trust, navigate complexity, and bring diverse stakeholders along on a journey they didn't know they were ready for
Bold and intellectually restless — you challenge assumptions, seek first principles, and aren't satisfied with "good enough" when "transformative" is within reach
Communicator and collaborator — you can translate technical depth into business impact fluently, for an executive audience and a junior engineer alike

Responsibilities

Enterprise AI Platform Strategy & Delivery Define and own the enterprise strategy for a secure, unified agentic AI platform built on Google Cloud Platform — the foundation that powers how AI gets built, deployed, and adopted across the organization.
AI Lab & Continuous Innovation Establish and lead an enterprise AI Lab that serves as the innovation engine for the future of hospitality — a dedicated space for rapid prototyping, emerging technology exploration, and high-velocity experimentation before ideas are ready for production.
Applied AI Delivery at Scale Own the end-to-end delivery of high-impact, cross-functional AI use cases that fundamentally change how colleagues work — not incremental improvements, but big-rock transformations that reshape workflows, decisions, and outcomes at enterprise scale.
Responsible AI & Governance Operationalize AI governance that's both rigorous and enabling — not a checkpoint at the end of the process, but a discipline embedded from day one.
Enterprise Adoption & Organizational Leadership AI only creates value when people use it — confidently, repeatedly, and at scale.