Vice President, AI & Workflow Automation

. Crane Worldwide Logistics . • Houston, TX

3d

About The Position

Steer your team's technical decisions to deliver on our vision of an ecosystem where humans, agents, and deterministic automations coexist in a pluggable architecture. Partner closely with business leaders, technical leadership, and other software and data engineering groups to refine our high-level technical strategy and define clear technical and team interfaces. Adapt our AI tech strategy to account for new capabilities. Leading our primary AI and Workflow Engineering functions: AI Engineering: guide a team of agent builders to deliver highly reliable outputs, managing consistency of tools and frameworks while evolving with new capabilities. Coach the team and set standards around evaluation, guardrails, observability, and other practical concerns that lead to successful agent deployments. AI Platform: develop the right set of internal abstractions, templates, and services to ensure ecosystem consistency and rapid development cycles, balancing exploration and autonomy against stability and consistency. Workflow Engineering: build domain-aligned teams of software engineers focused on developing and deploying workflow automations covering key business workflows, using our internal connector ecosystem and workflow frameworks like Temporal or DBOS to drive a high degree of operating rigor while staying flexible. Workflow Platform: establish a best-in-class ServiceNow deployment for case management, using 100% code[1]first deployment and a pluggable architecture that derives high off-the-shelf value for undifferentiated tools without giving up control of core architectural functions. Team structure, people, and recruiting: Develop high-performing engineering groups through coaching and hiring. Intentionally design and evolve teams to stay aligned with core objectives and keep clear lines of ownership. Lead by example in creating an environment where technical excellence, efficiency, and teamwork drive success, with a strong emphasis on collective achievement. Execution: Develop and operate policies to drive velocity and quality. Establish and maintain healthy coordination patterns within and beyond the core engineering departments. Leverage platform functions and team/process design to build an excellent developer experience for all specializations. Ensure that all engineering teams achieve our operating standards for design, validation, reliability, security, and incident management.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience leading engineering teams.
• Prior roles managing 20+ engineers.
• AI enthusiasm and frequent industry engagement, offset by skepticism and practicality.
• Recent experience leading AI and software development teams, successfully delivering AI-powered applications, intelligent agents, and automation solutions from concept through production deployment and ongoing maintenance.
• Hands-on comfort with modern AI and software engineering workflows: you won't be an individual contributor in the critical path but need to maintain your intuition & mechanical sympathy to guide a strong developer experience and make informed architecture & design decisions in a rapidly moving space.
• Deep knowledge of foundational engineering concepts is a given (e.g. distributed systems fundamentals, design tradeoffs, scaling patterns, how to manage nondeterministic ML or AI components).

Nice To Haves

• experience managing platform and ML teams.

Responsibilities

• Steer your team's technical decisions to deliver on our vision of an ecosystem where humans, agents, and deterministic automations coexist in a pluggable architecture.
• Partner closely with business leaders, technical leadership, and other software and data engineering groups to refine our high-level technical strategy and define clear technical and team interfaces.
• Adapt our AI tech strategy to account for new capabilities.
• Guide a team of agent builders to deliver highly reliable outputs, managing consistency of tools and frameworks while evolving with new capabilities.
• Coach the team and set standards around evaluation, guardrails, observability, and other practical concerns that lead to successful agent deployments.
• Develop the right set of internal abstractions, templates, and services to ensure ecosystem consistency and rapid development cycles, balancing exploration and autonomy against stability and consistency.
• Build domain-aligned teams of software engineers focused on developing and deploying workflow automations covering key business workflows, using our internal connector ecosystem and workflow frameworks like Temporal or DBOS to drive a high degree of operating rigor while staying flexible.
• Establish a best-in-class ServiceNow deployment for case management, using 100% code[1]first deployment and a pluggable architecture that derives high off-the-shelf value for undifferentiated tools without giving up control of core architectural functions.
• Develop high-performing engineering groups through coaching and hiring.
• Intentionally design and evolve teams to stay aligned with core objectives and keep clear lines of ownership.
• Lead by example in creating an environment where technical excellence, efficiency, and teamwork drive success, with a strong emphasis on collective achievement.
• Develop and operate policies to drive velocity and quality.
• Establish and maintain healthy coordination patterns within and beyond the core engineering departments.
• Leverage platform functions and team/process design to build an excellent developer experience for all specializations.
• Ensure that all engineering teams achieve our operating standards for design, validation, reliability, security, and incident management.

Benefits

• Quarterly Incentive Plan
• 136 hours of Paid Time Off which equals 17 days for the year, that can be used for Sick Time or for Personal Use
• Excellent Medical, Dental and Vision benefits
• Tuition Reimbursement for education related to your job
• Employee Referral Bonuses
• Employee Recognition and Rewards Program
• Paid Volunteer Time to support a cause that is close to your heart and contributes to our communities
• Employee Discounts
• Wellness Incentives that can go up to $100 per year for completing challenges, in addition to a discount on contribution rates

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive
• Education Level: No Education Listed