Director of Data & AI — Lead Snowflake & AI Innovation

Laudio; Gilbert (AZ); Hybrid; USD 171,000 - 244,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Company paid life Insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid time off and parental leave

Employee assistance program

Other wellness programs such as Headsp

Headspace and Airvet

Charitable matching program

Job summary

Ascend Learning, NASM’s parent, seeks a Director of Data and AI to own NASM’s data architecture and AI capabilities. You’ll lead the Snowflake estate, govern data contracts, and drive production AI/ML use cases across product, analytics, and operations.

You’ll enable an AI-first business through governance, tooling, and vendor partnerships, while partnering with Product and Architecture to scale data-driven decisions across NASM’s global fitness network.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, statistics, mathematics, engineering, or related field required; Master’s preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in data, analytics, or AI/ML; 4+ years of people management.
• Hands-on experience building and operating a modern data platform on Snowflake (or equivalent).
• Proven experience deploying machine learning and generative AI to production (MLOps).
• Strong understanding of data governance, privacy (GDPR, CCPA), and AI governance.
• Experience with modern data stack: ingestion (Fivetran/Airbyte), transformation (dbt), orchestration (Airflow/Prefect), BI (Power BI/Tableau/Looker).
• Azure cloud experience including Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Fabric.
• Demonstrated ability to lead data/AI teams in a matrixed, MSP-delivered delivery model.
• Strong executive communication; translate complex data/AI concepts for business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Data and AI team, including a Data Architect and AI/ML Engineer.
• Own NASM’s Snowflake estate: data model, contracts, performance, security.
• Evolve the data stack: ingestion, transformation, orchestration, semantic layer, BI tooling.
• Define and execute the AI/ML strategy; prioritize production use cases delivering value.
• Establish AI governance: model risk, responsible AI, privacy, vendor evaluation.
• Drive AI-first enablement; train product, analytics, architecture, and operations teams.
• Coordinate with MSP delivery and enterprise architecture alignment.
• Set operational metrics for data quality, pipeline reliability, model performance.
• Build self-service analytics while maintaining governance and trust.

Skills

Data architecture

AI/ML

Snowflake

MLOps

Azure AI

Executive communication

Governance

Data visualization

Vendor management

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Stats/Engineering

Master’s degree preferred

Tools

Fivetran

Airbyte

dbt

Airflow

Power BI

Tableau

Looker

Azure cloud

Job description

Ascend Learning, NASM’s parent, seeks a Director of Data and AI to own NASM’s data architecture and AI capabilities. You’ll lead the Snowflake estate, govern data contracts, and drive production AI/ML use cases across product, analytics, and operations.

You’ll enable an AI-first business through governance, tooling, and vendor partnerships, while partnering with Product and Architecture to scale data-driven decisions across NASM’s global fitness network.