Director, AI Engineering – Enterprise AI

Lumentum Operations LLC; Ottawa; On-site; CAD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Lumentum Canada is seeking an experienced Director of AI Engineering to build and lead a world-class AI engineering team. This leadership role designs and delivers enterprise-grade AI applications driving value across Marketing, Finance, Legal, Enterprise Search, and R&D workflows.

You will mentor engineers, establish best practices, scale AI capabilities across a globally distributed organization, and collaborate with product, data science, and business stakeholders to translate requirements

Qualifications

• 15+ years of professional software engineering experience with progression to senior/leadership roles.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow an AI engineering team, recruiting top talent and building a high-performing culture focused on technical excellence.
• Design and oversee the delivery of enterprise AI applications across multiple business functions (Marketing, Finance, Legal, Search, R&D).
• Mentor engineers in modern AI/ML systems design, cloud infrastructure, production deployment, and operational excellence.
• Collaborate with product, data science, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Drive technology decisions around AI frameworks, cloud platforms, and infrastructure to optimize for cost, performance, and reliability.
• Build and maintain systems for data pipelines, model serving, monitoring, and continuous improvement of AI applications.
• Lead technical strategy for scaling AI capabilities, including considerations for enterprise security, compliance, and governance.

Skills

AI/ML systems

Leadership

Cloud platforms

Python

Distributed teams

CI/CD

Observability

Code review

Production systems

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

Docker/Kubernetes

LLM frameworks

Job description

It's fun to work in a company where people truly BELIEVE in what they're doing! We're committed to bringing passion and customer focus to the business. If you like wild growth and working with happy, enthusiastic over-achievers, you'll enjoy your career with us! Lumentum Canada was awarded the 2022 National Capital Region’s Top Employers for the 6th consecutive year and the 2022 Career Directory Canada’s Best Employers for Recent Graduates for the 5th consecutive year.

Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced Director of AI Engineering to build and lead a world-class AI engineering team. This is a critical leadership role responsible for designing and delivering enterprise-grade AI applications that drive business value across Marketing, Finance, Legal, Enterprise Search, and R&D workflows. You will combine deep technical expertise with strong people leadership skills to grow the team, mentor engineers, establish best practices, and scale our AI capabilities across a globally distributed organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and grow an AI engineering team, recruiting top talent and building a high-performing culture focused on technical excellence
• Design and oversee the delivery of enterprise AI applications across multiple business functions (Marketing, Finance, Legal, Search, R&D)
• Establish technical standards, architecture patterns, and code review practices that ensure software engineering excellence and maintainability
• Mentor engineers in modern AI/ML systems design, cloud infrastructure, production deployment, and operational excellence
• Collaborate with product, data science, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into robust technical solutions
• Drive technology decisions around AI frameworks, cloud platforms, and infrastructure to optimize for cost, performance, and reliability
• Build and maintain systems for data pipelines, model serving, monitoring, and continuous improvement of AI applications
• Lead technical strategy for scaling AI capabilities, including considerations for enterprise security, compliance, and governance

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of professional software engineering experience with demonstrated progression to senior/leadership roles
• 3+ years of experience with AI/ML systems (including LLMs, generative AI, RAG architectures, or similar modern AI applications) in production environments
• 3+ years of technical leadership experience managing and mentoring engineering teams
• Deep hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and modern deployment practices
• Strong expertise in Python and/or other languages commonly used for AI/ML applications
• Proven ability to work effectively in globally distributed teams with experience managing across time zones
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices: version control, testing, code review, CI/CD, observability
• Track record of shipping production systems at scale with focus on reliability, performance, and maintainability
• Excellent communication skills; ability to articulate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in manufacturing, industrial, or enterprise software environments
• Familiarity with enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, workflow automation) and integration patterns
• Background in developing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems or knowledge management applications
• Experience with MLOps, model monitoring, and LLM evaluation frameworks
• Expertise in establishing and scaling engineering culture, documentation, and knowledge sharing practices
• Experience with enterprise security, compliance, and data governance requirements
• Track record of building systems that integrate with modern API ecosystems and third-party AI services

Lumentum is illuminating the networks of tomorrow with advanced photonic technologies that enable AI, data centers, telecom, industrial, and sensing applications. As AI accelerates the global demand for bandwidth and energy efficiency, we deliver the building blocks that keep data moving reliably, efficiently, and at massive scale. Our optical products support AI and compute infrastructure, cloud and DCI environments, metro and long-haul networks, while our lasers drive breakthroughs in precision manufacturing and sensing. For nearly five decades, Lumentum has been at the intersection of light and innovation. What began as a vision with JDS Uniphase to harness the power of photonics has evolved into a global force driving the communication infrastructure of tomorrow. At Lumentum, we’re building more than a business—we’re building a team of passionate innovators whose drive to collaborate, create, and connect the world fuels everything we do. We are part of the AI technology revolution and we are illuminating the path forward. Headquartered in San Jose, California, we operate worldwide through a network of R&D, manufacturing, and sales locations.