Director, AI Engineering Portfolio & Operations

Vector-Institute; Toronto; On-site; CAD 157,000 - 197,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Vacation time

Floater days

Group RRSP

Health Spending Account

Summer Hours program

Flexible work arrangements

Job summary

Vector Institute seeks a Director, AI Engineering Portfolio & Operations to lead its AI Engineering operating model in Toronto. You will steward portfolio, intake, prioritization, and governance across sponsor, SME, public-sector, and innovation efforts to maximize impact.

You will build scalable processes to translate research into product, manage budgets, and provide decision-ready reporting for senior leadership.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in technology operations, strategic planning, or delivery, ideally in AI/ML or research-to-product environments.
• Bachelor's degree required; Master's degree preferred.
• Experience operating as a senior advisor to executives with proven leadership and governance capabilities.
• Experience building portfolio management, intake, prioritization, capacity planning, and governance processes.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with technology, finance, HR, marketing, operations, data, and leadership.
• Strong written and verbal communication, with experience preparing senior leadership and board materials.
• Familiarity with open-source communities or developer relations is a plus.
• Experience supporting grant-funded or sponsor-funded initiatives is an asset.

Responsibilities

• Own AI Engineering portfolio management, intake, prioritization, and planning cycles.
• Maintain a single trusted view of active work, timelines, owners, dependencies, risks, and funding sources.
• Collaborate with senior leaders to assess new work against strategic fit, capacity, funding, and priority.
• Create operating processes for research-to-product prioritization and reusable assets.
• Set operating routines for knowledge management and scalable delivery processes.
• Support workforce planning, hiring priorities, and budget forecasting.
• Develop governance practices to make work visible and decisions clear.
• Help evolve technology governance in a fast-changing ecosystem with APIs and costs.
• Support grant-funded or strategic investments with capacity and alignment assessments.
• Build dashboards and reporting mechanisms for portfolio health and outcomes.
• Prepare decision-ready narratives for leadership and funders.
• Translate portfolio and operational data into executive-level insights.
• Manage a team of program and product managers with coaching and clarity.
• Foster ownership, transparency, and pragmatic execution across the team.
• Other duties as assigned.

Skills

Portfolio management

Leadership

Strategic planning

Budget forecasting

Executive reporting

Cross-functional collaboration

Resource allocation

Operations management

Education

Bachelor's degree in a relevant field

Master’s degree preferred

Job description

Vector Institute seeks a Director, AI Engineering Portfolio & Operations to lead its AI Engineering operating model in Toronto. You will steward portfolio, intake, prioritization, and governance across sponsor, SME, public-sector, and innovation efforts to maximize impact.

You will build scalable processes to translate research into product, manage budgets, and provide decision-ready reporting for senior leadership.