AI Program Lead

NELSON is seeking an AI Program Lead to manage the day-to-day delivery of AI pilots, projects, and automation solutions. This role translates stakeholder needs into clear scope and executable plans, directs developers and project team members, and remains accountable for coordinating delivery from discovery through production and ongoing operation.

Reporting to the VP of AI and Digital Services Strategy Leader, the AI Program Lead serves as the end-to-end functional and technical subject matter expert. The role requires practical depth across data ingestion, agent orchestration, integrations, automation, and user interfaces. Delivery is accomplished by directing implementation teams; personally coding or building solutions is not a core responsibility.

Attributes to support the NELSON Culture:

• Go All In. Own the Outcome. We go all in—with urgency, follow-through, and pride in the result.
• Be Direct. Be Respectful. Be Authentic.  We keep it real—with clarity, candor, and care. 
• Grow with Purpose.  We embrace growth—through learning, coaching, and continuous improvement. 
• Think Bold. Execute Smart.  We think boldly—and pair ambition with discipline. 
• Make Space for Everyone.  We value you—and build a culture where people can thrive and do their best work.

Qualifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty and responsibility satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Critical features of this job are described under the headings below. They may be subject to change at any time due to reasonable accommodation or other reasons.

• Manage the integrated delivery plan for all AI pilots and projects, including scope, milestones, estimates, dependencies, resource needs, risks, and stakeholder communications.
• Coordinate developers, data specialists, infrastructure teams, business owners, and vendors; assign and clarify work within agreed resource commitments and resolve delivery blockers.
• Maintain prioritized backlogs, acceptance criteria, status reporting, and change control. Escalate resource conflicts, material scope changes, and investment decisions to the VP.
• Plan testing, demonstrations, user acceptance, release readiness, and operational handover. Track pilot findings and recommend whether to advance, revise, pause, or stop an initiative.

• Lead discovery with stakeholders to understand workflows, user needs, data requirements, constraints, and intended business outcomes; shape these into feasible scope and delivery specifications.
• Direct solution design across ingestion, preparation, retrieval, model services, agent tools and orchestration, APIs, workflow automation, and user interface buildout.
• Translate requirements into process flows, user stories, technical work packages, and testable acceptance criteria that guide developers and project teams.
• Evaluate design tradeoffs and implementation proposals with architecture, security, data, and infrastructure specialists. Ensure access controls, human oversight, evaluations, observability, and failure recovery are addressed before release.

• Maintain a solution inventory with owners, dependencies, versions, support arrangements, operating costs, lifecycle status, and review dates.
• Coordinate monitoring, incident resolution, maintenance, upgrades, model and platform changes, regression testing, and support readiness with accountable technical teams.
• Recommend application retention, enhancement, consolidation, replacement, or retirement to the VP, supported by performance, adoption, risk, technical debt, and cost evidence.
• Prepare resource and investment recommendations covering human effort, vendor costs, licensing, infrastructure, and ongoing upkeep; coordinate approved changes and retirement activities.

• Bachelor's degree in information systems, computer science, engineering, business technology, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years of progressive experience in technical project delivery, solution delivery, or related roles, including leadership of complex AI or automation initiatives.
• 7+ years of experience in professional services, architecture, design, or another business delivering technology-enabled client services.
• Demonstrated experience directing agentic and automated solutions from data ingestion through user interface delivery, production deployment, and support.
• Strong working knowledge of retrieval-augmented generation, agent orchestration, tool calling, APIs, workflow integration, data pipelines, authentication, and application interfaces.
• Ability to assess technical designs, implementation estimates, evaluation results, and operational issues, and give clear direction to developers without serving as the primary builder.
• Proven ability to elicit requirements, shape scope, manage schedules and dependencies, and lead cross-functional teams through iterative delivery and controlled releases.
• Experience managing application lifecycles, support models, changes, vendor dependencies, and recommendations for resource investment.
• Clear communication, sound judgment, and the ability to translate technical issues into business decisions for senior leaders and stakeholders.

• Experience with enterprise AI platforms, agent development frameworks, cloud services, low-code automation, and custom application delivery across multiple technology ecosystems.
• Familiarity with AI evaluation, monitoring, data governance, privacy, security, and responsible AI practices in operational environments.
• Relevant project management, agile delivery, cloud, AI, or service management certifications.

Success will be assessed through the following outcomes, using agreed baselines and targets:

• Delivery reliability: milestones and accepted scope achieved against approved commitments, with timely escalation of variances.
• Solution readiness: documented acceptance, evaluation, support ownership, and operational handover before production release.
• Operational health: service performance, incident recurrence, maintenance completion, and unresolved lifecycle risks tracked and addressed.
• Business usefulness: adoption and agreed workflow or client outcomes validated with business owners after release.
• Investment clarity: timely, evidence-based recommendations on solution disposition, upgrades, and human or financial resource needs.

Help turn AI strategy into dependable solutions that improve how NELSON works and serves clients. This role offers ownership of delivery and lifecycle coordination while partnering directly with AI strategy leadership and the teams building these capabilities.