Director, AI Engineering Portfolio & Operations

POSITION SUMMARY

Vector is seeking a Director, AI Engineering Portfolio & Operations to serve as the operating leader for the AI Engineering team. Reporting to the Vice President, AI Engineering, this role will ensure the AI Engineering team effectively delivers within a complex, multi-stakeholder environment. Core responsibilities include portfolio management, capacity planning, resource allocation, financial management, governance, reporting, intake, delivery rhythms, and cross-functional coordination.

The successful candidate will bring senior operating discipline to a complex, innovative AI engineering environment. They will build scalable processes to prioritize a research-to-product portfolio and position the Vector AI Engineering team to have outsized impact in supporting AI adoption across the private and public sectors in Canada.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the AI Engineering portfolio management, intake, and prioritization processes, including portfolio reviews, planning cycles, roadmap reviews, OKR tracking, delivery updates, retrospectives, and board reporting cadences - to ensure optimal resource allocation across various sponsor, SME, public-sector, and innovation deliverables;
• Establish and maintain a single, trusted view of active work, upcoming demand, owners, timelines, dependencies, risks, and funding sources, ensuring resourcing risks are identified early and the team is not overcommitted;
• Collaborate with senior leaders and their teams to assess new work against strategic fit, team capacity, funding, urgency, reuse potential, and organizational priority;
• Create the operating process for research-to-product and project-to-product prioritization, ensuring that research outputs, cohort learnings, sponsor needs, and market signals are evaluated consistently for potential translation into reusable assets, reference implementations, product features, programming, or technical content;
• Set the operating routines of the AI Engineering team, executing on best practices for knowledge management across the team, and partnering with AI Engineering managers and scientists to implement scalable processes for technical program delivery;
• Support the Vice President, AI Engineering with workforce planning, hiring prioritization, role design, onboarding needs, and organizational scaling, including maintaining accurate budget forecasts;
• Create governance practices that make work visible, decisions clear, dependencies managed, and risks escalated appropriately;
• In partnership with the Vice President, AI Engineering and the Chief Information Officer, help evolve technology governance practices and processes to adapt to a fast-changing ecosystem with APIs, tokens, and software costs;
• Support grant, sponsor-funded, or strategic investment planning by assessing financial implications, delivery capacity, and alignment to AI Engineering priorities;
• Build and maintain dashboards or reporting mechanisms that provide visibility into portfolio health, delivery progress, capacity, budget, risks, adoption metrics, repo/community engagement, and operational outcomes;
• Prepare timely, clear, and decision-ready reporting and narratives for the Vice President, AI Engineering, senior leadership, Board members, funders, and other stakeholders;
• Translate complex portfolio and operational information into decision-ready narratives for executive audiences;
• Manage a team of technical program managers and product managers, providing coaching, accountability, and operating clarity while upgrading the structure, standards, and effectiveness of the program and product functions;
• Build a culture of ownership, transparency, operational excellence, and pragmatic execution; and,
• Other related duties as assigned from time to time.

KEY SUCCESS MEASURES

• Leadership across Vector work streams make principled accept, defer, redirect, or decline decisions for new work based on AI Engineering capacity, strategic fit, and expected impact;
• Vector's brand within the AI Engineering technical community has measurably increased;
• AI Engineering hiring and staffing decisions support a forecasted-view of upcoming work and strategic planning;
• AI Engineering produces rigorous, reliable board-level and senior leadership reports and metrics;
• The AI Engineering team delivers outsized impact to Vector based on clear team awareness and tracking of goals and OKRs; and,
• AI Engineering maintains an optimal portfolio of work to further the strategic direction of the institute and support the federal AI strategy.

PROFILE OF THE IDEAL CANDIDATE

• 10+ years in technology operations, strategic planning, or delivery, ideally in AI, machine learning, research organizations, enterprise technology, or innovation environments;
• Bachelor's degree in a relevant field required; Master's degree preferred;
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a senior right hand to an executive or functional leader, with the judgment to make or facilitate clear tradeoff decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments;
• Experience managing teams and raising the operating maturity of a program, product operations, or business operations function;
• Strong financial and operational management skills, including budget tracking, forecasting, resource planning, and executive reporting;
• Experience building portfolio management, intake, prioritization, capacity planning, and governance processes, particularly in organizations transitioning from bespoke delivery toward reusable products, platforms or assets;
• Ability to work cross-functionally with technical leaders, finance, HR, marketing, operations, data, industry innovation, and senior leadership;
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including ability to prepare senior leadership and board-level materials;
• Strong organizational discipline without creating unnecessary overhead;
• Familiarity with open-source, developer communities, technical content, or developer relations operating models is an asset; and,
• Experience supporting grant-funded, sponsor-funded, public-sector, or multi-stakeholder initiatives is an asset.

TOTAL REWARDS: The expected salary for this position will be $157,300 - $196,600 per year, plus benefits if applicable. The final salary offer will reflect the successful candidate's experience, skills, and qualifications, in alignment with the Vector Institute's Compensation Policy and may differ from above.

The Vector Institute's Total Rewards approach extends beyond traditional compensation and benefits. Full-time employees are eligible for a comprehensive suite of supports that recognize and value employees, including vacation time, floater days, GRRSP, a Health Spending Account, a Summer Hours program, and flexible work arrangements.

POSITION STATUS: This posting is for a new vacancy.

USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Vector may use both internal and external third party AI-based tools to assist in the screening of applications for this posting. Any data collected will be used solely for recruitment purposes and handled in accordance with Vector's External Privacy Policy and Use of AI-Based Tools in Recruitment and Selection Policy.