Head of AI & Enterprise Innovation

Southland Industries, Inc.; Carrollton (TX); Hybrid; USD 162,000 - 247,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401k match

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Annual bonus

Paid parental leave

Paid holidays

Job summary

Southland Industries, Inc. seeks a Director of Innovation to build and lead the enterprise innovation capability.

This leader creates a structured path for identifying opportunities, evaluating technologies, running disciplined experiments, and scaling solutions that deliver measurable value. The role oversees the innovation operating model, portfolio, governance, partnerships, and performance from idea intake through to scale or pivot decisions, with initial emphasis on AI and Generative AI.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, engineering, innovation, or related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.
• 10+ years of progressive experience across technology, digital transformation, innovation, product management, strategy, or related disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience building or leading innovation, digital, emerging-technology, or transformation capabilities.
• Experience taking ideas from concept through experimentation and into scaled implementation.
• Strong understanding of AI, Generative AI, automation, data, and emerging-technology trends and their practical business application.
• Experience establishing governance, intake, prioritization, experimentation, and portfolio-management processes.
• Demonstrated ability to develop business cases, define measurable outcomes, evaluate investments, and communicate recommendations to executives.
• Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries and work effectively with business and technology leaders.
• Ability to balance innovation speed with security, legal, financial, architectural, data, and operational considerations.

Responsibilities

• Establish Southland’s enterprise innovation strategy, operating model, governance, processes, funding approach, and ways of working.
• Define roles, decision rights, investment criteria, escalation paths, standards, and guardrails that support responsible experimentation without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Establish and manage an Innovation Steering Committee, including decision criteria, portfolio reviews, meeting cadence, and executive reporting.
• Create a practical lifecycle that moves opportunities from idea to assessment, experiment, and a clear scale, stop, or iterate decision.
• Establish a common enterprise process for capturing, framing, and evaluating innovation opportunities.
• Partner with business leaders to define the problem, intended outcome, and accountable sponsor before selecting a technology solution.
• Evaluate opportunities based on strategic alignment, business value, feasibility, risk, investment, scalability, and organizational readiness.
• Maintain enterprise visibility into the innovation pipeline, active experiments, investments, outcomes, dependencies, and decisions.
• Identify overlapping efforts, promote reuse, and provide clear recommendations on which opportunities should advance, pause, pivot, or stop.

Education

Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, engineering, innovation, or related discipline

Job description

Southland Industries, Inc. seeks a Director of Innovation to build and lead the enterprise innovation capability.

This leader creates a structured path for identifying opportunities, evaluating technologies, running disciplined experiments, and scaling solutions that deliver measurable value. The role oversees the innovation operating model, portfolio, governance, partnerships, and performance from idea intake through to scale or pivot decisions, with initial emphasis on AI and Generative AI.