Director, AI Engineering (Data Science)

TL;DR

Director, AI Engineering (Data Science): Leading the full lifecycle of AI model development and technical strategy for enterprise clients with an accent on custom transformer architectures and scalable machine learning solutions. Focus on bridging the gap between complex technical execution and business impact, managing high-performing engineering teams, and driving innovation in MLOps and model governance.

Location: Columbia, MD (US-based role)

Salary: $180,000–$240,000

Company

hirify.global is a premier AI services provider dedicated to co-creating meaningful impact for clients through data science, AI, and human expertise.

What you will do

• Define technical AI strategy and align investments with business objectives.
• Lead the design and development of custom transformer models for sequence modeling, propensity scoring, and churn prediction.
• Manage and mentor AI/ML engineers, senior data scientists, and MLOps engineers.
• Oversee end-to-end data science workflows from problem framing to production deployment.
• Lead technical discovery and solutioning with enterprise clients, presenting roadmaps to C-suite stakeholders.
• Establish engineering standards, MLOps best practices, and model governance frameworks.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in data science and machine learning with 3–5 years in a leadership role.
• Deep hands-on expertise in designing and training custom transformer architectures from scratch.
• Strong foundation in Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and HuggingFace Transformers.
• Experience with large-scale data platforms like Spark, BigQuery, or Snowflake.
• Proven track record of leading high-performing AI/ML teams in client-facing environments.
• Exceptional executive communication skills for presenting to C-suite and senior stakeholders.

Nice to have

• Ph.D. in a quantitative field.
• Background in privacy-preserving ML (federated learning, differential privacy).
• Knowledge of graph neural networks (GNNs).
• Published research in top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, KDD).
• Experience with real-time inference and streaming pipelines (Kafka, Flink).

Culture & Benefits

• Competitive compensation package including 401K and performance-based factors.
• Comprehensive health benefits: medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Support for work-life balance with PTO, paid holidays, and disability coverage.
• Professional development opportunities within a high-impact, autonomous environment.