Executive Director – AI and Machine Learning

At CVS Health, we’re building a world of health around every consumer and surrounding ourselves with dedicated colleagues who are passionate about transforming health care.

As the nation’s leading health solutions company, we reach millions of Americans through our local presence, digital channels and more than 300,000 purpose-driven colleagues – caring for people where, when and how they choose in a way that is uniquely more connected, more convenient and more compassionate. And we do it all with heart, each and every day.

The Executive Director, AI and Machine Learning, is a leadership position responsible for overseeing the governance, development, and implementation, of enterprise AI and ML solutions focused on IT operations and security excellence. This role is pivotal in establishing and enforcing standards, driving innovation, and delivering reliable, responsible and cost-effective AI-powered platforms, solutions, and insights in alignment with the organization's goals, policies, and standards. The Executive Director will play a critical role in unifying organizational AI/ML practices, optimizing IT operations, managing stakeholder relationships, and driving continuous improvement initiatives.

PRIMARY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Governance Framework:

• Develop, implement, and enhance governance frameworks and policies to ensure effective oversight of operational and security-focused AI and ML solutions. 
• Establish and enforce standards for the build, management, governance, and utilization of AI models and model execution platforms. 
• Establish and socialize a framework for the documentation, proposal, evaluation, build, delivery, and ongoing value assessment of scalable operations and security-focused AI/ML solutions.
• Evaluate and certify foundational models for use within CVS Health, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and security requirements. 
• Regularly assess and enhance the governance model and associated standards to address emerging challenges and opportunities.

Operational Excellence:

• Establish and maintain robust MLOps, GenAIOps, and LLMOps practices.
• Build and manage pipelines to enable teams to design AI-powered applications, develop and experiment with models, and deploy, monitor, and maintain them in production.
• Drive delivery of AI and ML solutions providing provide deep insights and reporting on operations and security data.
• Develop proactive AI-driven solutions to measurably reduce time to detect security and operational issues, provide adaptive recommendations, and automate remediation.
• Deliver solutions to enable users to interact with operational data driving measurable improvements in productivity, performance, and innovation.
• Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and ethical standards in AI/ML operations.
• Manage resources and budgets effectively, operating the AI and ML function as a standalone business unit with comprehensive reporting.

Team Management and Development:

• Lead and mentor a team of data scientists, machine learning engineers, and full-stack engineers.
• Partner with other AI/ML Leaders within CVS Health to drive collaboration, alignment on best practices, and model reusability.
• Foster a collaborative and high-performance culture, promoting continuous learning and professional development.

Technology and Innovation:

• Ensure AI and ML platforms are built with scalability, reliability, safety, fairness, transparency, and security as core tenets.
• Design, build, and operate necessary on-premise AI processor infrastructure and platforms to effectively deploy and manage enterprise AI workloads.
• Drive the adoption of cutting-edge technologies and methodologies to continuously improve AI/ML capabilities and model performance.
• Collaborate with IT and cloud infrastructure teams to optimize the deployment environment for AI/ML models.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Communicate the value and impact of AI/ML initiatives to senior leadership and other stakeholders.
• Engage with external partners, vendors, and industry experts to stay abreast of the latest trends and advancements in AI/ML, IT Operations, SRE, and Cybersecurity.
• Advocate for the adoption of AI/ML solutions across the organization.

EDUCATION:  PhD or Master's degree in AI/ML, Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering, or equivalent experience

PRIOR WORK EXPERIENCE:

• 15+ years leading Enterprise Machine Learning, Infrastructure, Data Science, and/or SRE practices
• 5+ years applying Machine Learning to optimize technology operations (AIOps)
• 10+ years at a leadership level or above, wit