Director, Federal Solutions

C3.ai, Inc.; Tysons (VA); On-site; USD 182,000 - 247,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous equity plan

Excellent benefits

Job summary

C3 AI in Tysons, VA is seeking a Director of Federal Solutions to lead a team delivering enterprise AI for Federal, Defense, and IC customers. You will hire, coach, and develop Federal Solution Leaders, set technical standards, staff missions, and tackle the hardest technical and customer challenges.

You will work with government executives, ensure federal readiness (FedRAMP, DoD IL4‑IL6, NIST), and collaborate with product and engineering teams to raise the bar on delivery.

Qualifications

• This is a technical delivery‑leadership role with proven people leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• Experience delivering complex enterprise software or data solutions to Federal/DoD/IC.
• Ability to guide architectures, data models, and design tradeoffs.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the team of Federal Solution Leaders.
• Own delivery quality across federal engagements, ensuring secure production deployments.
• Set architecture standards, delivery methodologies, and reusable patterns.
• Staff missions and balance capacity across engagements while managing risk.
• Engage government executives and represent the team to stakeholders.
• Ensure federal readiness and compliance (FedRAMP, IL4‑IL6, NIST 800‑53/171).
• Bridge field learnings to product and engineering; support growth with Sales.

Skills

Technical leadership

Delivery management

Federal program delivery

Security clearance

Cloud architectures

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related

Advanced degree a plus

Tools

AWS GovCloud

Azure Government

CI/CD pipelines

Kubernetes

Job description

C3 AI (NYSE: AI), is the Enterprise AI application software company. C3 AI delivers a family of fully integrated products including the C3 Agentic AI Platform, an end-to-end platform for developing, deploying, and operating enterprise AI applications, C3 AI applications, a portfolio of industry-specific SaaS enterprise AI applications that enable the digital transformation of organizations globally, and C3 Generative AI, a suite of domain-specific generative AI offerings for the enterprise. Learn more at: C3 AI

The Director, Federal Solutions leads the team of Federal Solution Leaders who deliver C3 AI's enterprise AI solutions to Federal, Defense, and Intelligence Community customers. This is a delivery-leadership role for a hands‑on technical leader‑someone who came up through engineering and mission delivery and can still evaluate an architecture, a data model, or a design decision, but whose primary job is now to build, develop, and get the best out of a high‑caliber technical team.

You will own the quality and success of federal delivery across a portfolio of accounts: hiring and coaching Federal Solution Leaders, setting technical standards and repeatable solution patterns, staffing the right people to the right missions, and stepping in on the hardest technical and customer challenges. You will be the senior technical face of the team to government executives, and the connective tissue back to C3 AI's product and engineering organizations. This role manages a team of Federal Solution Leaders and reports into C3 AI's Federal leadership.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and develop the team. Hire, coach, mentor, and manage the performance of a team of Federal Solution Leaders-growing their technical depth, mission fluency, and customer‑leadership skills, and building a bench for the future.
• Own delivery quality. Be accountable for the technical quality and mission impact of engagements across the federal portfolio, ensuring solutions are sound, secure, and delivered to production.
• Set technical standards. Establish the architecture standards, delivery methodology, reusable solution patterns, and best practices the team works from, and raise the technical bar over time.
• Staff the mission. Match the right people to the right accounts, balance capacity across engagements, and manage utilization and resourcing as demand shifts.
• Stay technically credible. Remain close enough to the work to review architectures, pressure-test design decisions, and personally help unblock the hardest technical and data problems when the team needs it.
• Engage government executives. Serve as a senior technical leader in front of government sponsors and mission owners-building trust, navigating escalations, and representing the team's work at the executive level.
• Own federal readiness. Ensure delivery across the portfolio meets federal security and compliance expectations (e.g., FedRAMP, DoD Impact Levels IL4-IL6, NIST 800-53/800-171, and applicable ATO processes) and that work is executed appropriately in classified and controlled environments.
• Bridge field to product. Channel field learnings from across the team into C3 AI's product and engineering organizations so the platform and the next deployment get better.
• Support growth. Partner with Sales and capture teams as a technical advisor-scoping delivery approach, informing estimates, and supporting demonstrations-while revenue ownership sits with the go-to-market organization.
• Build the practice. Improve how the federal delivery team works: onboarding, enablement, tooling, and the repeatable playbooks that let the team scale.

Qualifications:

This is a technical delivery‑leadership role. We expect proven people leadership and genuine technical credibility-this is not a generalist management or pure program‑management role.

• U.S. citizenship required.
• Active U.S. Government Top Secret/SCI security clearance required; CI or Full‑Scope Polygraph strongly preferred.
• 10+ years in technical delivery, engineering, or technically focused consulting, including 4+ years directly leading and developing technical teams (engineers, solution/delivery leads, or data scientists).
• Technical credibility (required). A background in software or data engineering or hands‑on technical delivery, with the ability to evaluate enterprise AI and data architectures, reason about data and design tradeoffs, and earn the respect of the engineers and mission experts you lead.
• Bachelor's degree required in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Engineering, or a related technical or quantitative discipline; advanced degree a plus.
• Demonstrated track record of delivering complex enterprise software, AI/ML, or data solutions to production‑ideally within Federal, Defense, or Intelligence Community environments.
• Deep subject‑matter expertise in one or more federal mission domains (e.g., defense, intelligence, aerospace, logistics/supply chain) sufficient to guide the team and earn credibility with government stakeholders.
• Proven ability to hire, coach, and retain high‑performing technical talent, and to manage delivery quality and risk across multiple concurrent engagements.
• Experience working directly with senior government or enterprise executives‑comfortable in both mission/executive conversations and deep technical reviews.
• Familiarity with enterprise data environments and modern deployment practices (cloud data warehouses, APIs, CI/CD, containerization, cloud‑native services, infrastructure-as-code) sufficient to lead a technical team delivering them.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience managing a team of engineers, solution leads, or technical delivery staff-ideally within a forward‑deployed engineering or professional‑services function at a SaaS or enterprise software vendor.
• Prior U.S. military or government service, or extensive experience delivering within Department of War (DoW/DoD), the Intelligence Community, or Aerospace & Defense programs.
• CI or Full‑Scope Polygraph, and prior experience leading delivery in classified, SCIF, or air‑gapped environments.
• Experience delivering AI/ML platforms or data‑heavy enterprise applications at scale, including generative AI, predictive maintenance, optimization, or decision-support solutions.
• Experience with government cloud environments (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government) and accreditation processes (FedRAMP, DoD IL, ATO).
• Awareness of export‑control and handling requirements (e.g., ITAR/EAR) relevant to defense and intelligence work.
• Track record of building repeatable delivery methodologies and scaling a team as demand grows.

Location and Employment:

Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for current or future company sponsorship.

C3 AI provides excellent benefits, a competitive compensation package and generous equity plan.

Salary

Virginia Base Pay Range

$182,000 — $247,000 USD

C3 AI is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affimative Action Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of any legally protected characteristics, including disabled and veteran status.