Director of AI

Allen Austin; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Allen Austin, partnering with a leading Houston‑based engineering firm, seeks its first Director of AI to own and scale AI initiatives across engineering disciplines.

This hands‑on role reports to the CEO, defining problems, delivering working tools to engineers, and measuring impact to drive time savings, cost reduction, and quality improvements. The ideal candidate has extensive AI/ML leadership experience and a track record with production LLM applications.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in AI/ML or data science
• 3+ years leading teams or major initiatives
• Production delivery of modern LLM applications (RAG, agents, prompt engineering)
• Experience with regulated or safety-critical industries such as energy, aerospace, medical devices, or defense
• Exposure to reliability engineering concepts and cloud services is a plus

Responsibilities

• Make decades of reports and data searchable with citations and access controls
• Build AI-assisted workflows for proposals, failure analysis, and reporting
• Collaborate on ERP upgrade and Power BI integration to unify hours, revenue, and project data
• Establish AI governance covering confidentiality, ITAR/EAR, IP, and model validation
• Drive adoption through training and change management across business units
• Report value, risk, cost, and ROI to CEO and Board
• Scope AI-enabled client offerings leveraging AWS partnerships and firm data

Skills

AI/ML leadership

LLM applications

Data engineering

Governance & security

Education

Bachelor’s degree in engineering/computer science

MS or PhD strongly preferred

Tools

AWS Bedrock

SageMaker

Power BI

Dynamics 365

Job description

Allen Austin is partnering with a leading Houston-based engineering firm to find its first Director of AI.

For more than fifty years, our client has solved technical problems others can’t in energy, aerospace, medical devices, and consumer products. It is not a technology company. It is a design, engineering, and testing firm whose product is engineering judgment, backed by decades of failure investigations, test data, finite element models, and reports. As AI models become commodities, that record is the edge competitors can’t copy, but most of it is hard to find and harder to reuse.

The Role

This is a hands‑on, full‑time role reporting directly to the CEO. The firm needs a builder who will sit with a practice leader, define the problem, put a working tool in engineers’ hands, measure the result, and scale what works. Success is measured in time saved, work won, and quality improved, not pilots launched.

What You’ll Do

• Make decades of reports, test data, lab notes, drawings, and archives searchable and citable, with sources cited and access controls in place
• Build AI-assisted workflows for proposals, failure analysis, and reporting, with an accountable engineer making the final call every time
• Partner with Finance and IT on a Microsoft Dynamics ERP upgrade and Power BI so hours, revenue, pipeline, and project performance come from one trusted source
• Set AI governance with the Chief Counsel, covering client confidentiality, ITAR/EAR and CMMC, privilege, IP, and model validation for safety‑critical work
• Drive adoption through training, a champion in every business unit, and plain‑spoken change management
• Report value, risk, cost, and ROI to the CEO, executive team, and Board
• Scope AI‑enabled client offerings built on the firm’s AWS partnership and its own data

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science, or a related field (MS or PhD strongly preferred)
• 8+ years in AI/ML, data science, or software engineering, including 3+ years leading teams or major initiatives
• Production delivery of modern LLM applications, including RAG, agents, prompt engineering or fine‑tuning, and evaluation
• Strong understanding of agentic frameworks and MCP gateways and registries
• Data engineering on messy, unstructured technical material, including scanned legacy reports and test data
• Security, privacy, and governance practice for sensitive client data
• Experience in regulated or safety‑critical industries such as energy, aerospace, medical devices, or defense
• Credibility with senior engineers and executives
• Exposure to reliability engineering (FMEA, root cause analysis, physics of failure), AWS (Bedrock, SageMaker), and the Microsoft stack (Microsoft 365, Dynamics, Power BI) is a plus

Why This Firm

The company is 100% employee‑owned, governed by an independent fiduciary board, and committed to doubling revenue in five years. Every engineer is an owner, and the Director of AI will be one too.

Location and Compensation

Based in Houston, Texas, with regular travel to the firm’s test facilities and other North American offices. Competitive base salary and bonus, comprehensive benefits, and participation in the company’s Employee Stock Ownership Plan.