Director of AI-Driven Applications & Innovation

Central-Valley-Ag-Cooperative; York (NE); Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Central Valley Ag Cooperative in York, NE seeks a Director of Applied Innovation to lead a small, fast team building and running CVA's custom business apps, including RouteForge and Gravis, and grower portals. The role writes code, sets direction, and ensures usable software reaches users in weeks rather than quarters.

The director also drives architecture alignment, AI-assisted development, deployment, monitoring, and incident response, while partnering across IT and data teams and managing

Qualifications

• Cloud-based deployment, hosting, identity, secrets, monitoring, and cost control using AWS and/or Azure.
• Systems and data integration via APIs and ERP or third-party platforms.
• Ability to decide scope and ship a focused first version.
• Strong written and verbal communication with non-technical stakeholders.
• Ownership of production systems, including release management and incident response.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a small two-person team and hire as needed.
• Personally design, develop, and review application code and ship features.
• Own the portfolio roadmap, intake, priorities, and scope.
• Establish a rapid delivery cadence to deliver usable software in weeks.
• Own production availability, deployment, monitoring, and incident response.
• Enforce engineering practices, version control, testing, and documentation.
• Shape AI-assisted development tooling and guardrails.
• Partner with Enterprise Architecture for standards and data models.
• Collaborate with IT on hosting, identity, access, and secure development.
• Create runbooks, training, and docs to empower Tier 1/2 support.
• Coordinate with Data & AI Enablement to avoid duplication.
• Manage vendor relations, cloud spend, and licensing.
• Report health and risk to CTO and business leadership.

Skills

Cloud deployment

APIs & data integration

Decision making

Stakeholder communication

Production systems ownership

Education

Bachelor's degree in tech field

Leadership experience

Job description

Central Valley Ag Cooperative in York, NE seeks a Director of Applied Innovation to lead a small, fast team building and running CVA's custom business apps, including RouteForge and Gravis, and grower portals. The role writes code, sets direction, and ensures usable software reaches users in weeks rather than quarters.

The director also drives architecture alignment, AI-assisted development, deployment, monitoring, and incident response, while partnering across IT and data teams and managing