Overview
Duties, Responsibilities & Other
The Director of Innovation Labs leads KCI Labs, where new technology is explored, tested and proven before it becomes part of how KCI delivers new approaches to existing challenges. The role spans physical and digital technology, safe environments for experimentation, employee-led innovation, and KCI's approach to open-source technology. The Director works in support of KCI's existing businesses, helping turn promising ideas into tools KCI uses internally and capabilities it can offer its clients. This is a leadership role as much as a technical one. The Director manages a small and growing Labs team spanning hardware and software engineering, design, and technical production work, and also guides people who contribute without reporting to Labs, including the Open-Source Council and employees across the firm who take part in Citizen Development. Much of this work begins without firm specifications or defined deliverables, so the role calls for someone who pairs vision with practical, effective management.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
Lead KCI Labs
• Set and manage the Labs agenda, portfolio and budget in line with the Enterprise Technology (ET) strategic plan and KCI's
innovation priorities.
• Explore and prototype emerging technologies, physical and digital, that address real business needs.
• Provide safe environments where KCI teams can experiment without risk to production systems.
• Make timely, evidence-based decisions about which efforts move forward and which stop.
Move ideas into practice
• Partner with the Business Solutions team to develop new tools and capabilities alongside the people who will use them.
• Work with Solutions Engineering and other ET teams to move proven work into production, using clear hand-off and approval
criteria.
• Help shape the business case when a Labs capability could become a service for clients.
• Measure and report the value Labs delivers to the firm.
Enable employee-led innovation
• Lead KCI's Citizen Development program, giving employees the tools, training and guardrails to build their own solutions
safely.
• Build an active community of employee innovators and share what works across the firm.
Guide KCI's use of open-source technology
• Establish and lead an Open-Source Council that advises the CTO.
• Evaluate open-source and open-weight alternatives, and help develop policies for their responsible use.
Lead people, directly and through influence
• Hire, manage and develop a growing Labs team across hardware and software engineering, design, and technical production
roles, setting clear expectations and supporting each person's growth.
• Lead volunteer and informal contributors, such as Open-Source Council members and citizen developers, through influence,
guidance and mentorship rather than formal authority.
• Turn open-ended ideas into clear goals, priorities and next steps, so teams can make progress when specifications are
incomplete and outcomes are uncertain.
• Measure success not only by what gets built, but by how well people, both direct reports and wider contributors, are led to
successful outcomes.
• Build strong relationships with sector and practice leaders so ideas flow into Labs from across the business.
• Foster a culture of curiosity, accountability and well-run experimentation.
• Other duties as assigned
Qualifications
Education and/or Work Experience Requirements:
• Bachelor's degree in business, computer science or equivalent experience
• 10+ years in technology, engineering or product development, including 5+ years managing people.
• A track record of taking ideas from prototype into everyday use.
• Demonstrated ability to lead both direct reports and people outside a formal reporting line, such as cross-functional, volunteer
or community contributors.
• Experience leading teams through ambiguity: turning broad goals into practical plans and delivering results without fixed
specifications.
Education and/or Work Experience Preferred:
• Experience in architecture, engineering, construction, utilities or a similar field.
• 5+ years' experience running an R&D lab, innovation group, makerspace, product team, or start-up, with responsibility for
budget and portfolio.
• Experience leading citizen-developer, low-code or other employee innovation programs.
• Familiarity with emerging technologies such as sensors and IoT, drones, reality capture, robotics, and AI.
• Experience with open-source software governance.
• Experience managing multidisciplinary teams that combine hardware, software, design and technician roles.
• Hands-on experience as a founder or early employee in a technology startup is strongly preferred.
Pre-employment drug screening and background check are conditions of employment. Motor vehicle checks may be required based upon position.
