VP, Tech & Innovation

Trane Technologies•Davidson, NC

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Vice President, Technology & Innovation will lead the company’s technology and innovation agenda, using technology to improve personal productivity, create new capabilities, and solve important business problems. The role will establish a practical innovation engine that combines technology scouting, rapid experimentation, platform and data-product enablement, AI adoption, and disciplined value realization. It will create reusable capabilities and clear pathways for scaling successful initiatives beyond isolated pilots. The successful candidate will work with senior leaders on technology vision, with users to understand workflows, and with teams to evaluate emerging technologies, shape proofs of concept, and establish mechanisms for scaling trusted capabilities. The role also builds and leads a high-performing team and fosters a culture of curiosity, experimentation, learning, accountability, and responsible risk-taking. The work arrangement is onsite Monday through Thursday, with employees choosing their work location on Fridays according to work needs. The role is incentive eligible and is not sales commission eligible.

Responsibilities

Define and communicate an enterprise technology and innovation strategy aligned with business priorities and employee needs.
Translate technology trends, emerging capabilities, and external signals into a focused portfolio of opportunities.
Establish investment choices, stage gates, decision rights, and portfolio review mechanisms; balance near-term productivity opportunities with longer-term capabilities.
Identify and prioritize opportunities for AI, automation, analytics, and digital tools to improve employee productivity and decision quality.
Make approved capabilities easy to discover, access, use, and support, and partner with business units to embed them into real workflows.
Support responsible experimentation and practical AI literacy across the enterprise.
Build and scale secure, reliable, reusable platforms for AI, analytics, automation, and emerging technology.
Establish reference architectures, reusable components, APIs, data products, and patterns that reduce duplication and technical fragmentation.
Partner with data governance and domain owners to ensure data products are trusted, documented, governed, and sustainable.
Integrate capabilities with enterprise applications, ERP, connected products, edge environments, and other technology foundations as appropriate.
Establish a technology radar and a disciplined pipeline for evaluating emerging technologies, startups, research, and ecosystem opportunities.
Lead proofs of value, proofs of technology, and proofs of concept to test user value, technical feasibility, risk, economics, and scalability.
Create a safe experimentation environment with controls proportionate to risk, and apply clear criteria to pivot, stop, transition, or scale experiments.
Ensure material experiments have a problem statement, sponsor, value hypothesis, owner, and next-step decision.
Enable functions, business units, analytics, product, technology, and other teams through shared platforms, reusable patterns, communities of practice, and targeted expertise.
Build partnerships across IT and the business while maintaining clear accountability for decisions and outcomes.
Establish mechanisms for local innovation within enterprise standards and guardrails.
Develop an ecosystem of internal talent, external partners, universities, startups, and technology providers.
Embed security, privacy, architecture, data quality, responsible AI, compliance, and cost management into the capability lifecycle.
Partner with data governance to clarify data-product ownership, quality expectations, metadata, access, lineage, and lifecycle requirements.
Establish adoption, usage, benefit, and risk measures before scaling material capabilities; review realized benefits and redirect resources when needed.
Communicate progress, tradeoffs, risks, and value clearly to executive leadership.
Build and lead a high-performing team skilled in scouting, designing, prototyping, productizing, and scaling technology-enabled capabilities.
Foster a culture of curiosity, experimentation, learning, accountability, and responsible risk-taking; develop leaders and practitioners through communities of practice, coaching, and exposure to business problems.
Model collaboration, transparency, inclusion, and disciplined follow-through.