Director AI Software Engineering Generative AI Products Digital Transformation

Position Description

In this role, you will translate the needs of our cross-functional stakeholders into user-facing applications and lead the development of AI-driven applications, including conversational interfaces, chatbots, text summarizers, and recommendation engines, tailored to the needs of our community. Partnering with Product Managers, Machine Learning Engineers, Data Scientists, and Cloud Platform Engineers, you will build production-ready AI solutions that drive personalized engagement, expand educational reach, and support new learning models. Your contributions will reinforce HBS?s leadership in education and business by shaping the future of AI-driven learning experiences.Responsibilities Include:

• Design and develop the architecture and infrastructure for GenAI products, including search interfaces, chatbots, and text summarizers, ensuring optimized performance that meets specific product goals.
• Collaborate closely with product management and engineering leads to align on technical roadmap, guiding engineering teams in effectively integrating LLM capabilities into product implementations.
• Establish best practices for building fair, accountable and transparent AI applications, proactively assessing and mitigating risks related to model bias and failures.
• Implement robust monitoring systems, including feedback pipelines and correction mechanisms, to enhance model safety and reliability.
• Communicate complex AI concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences through verbal, visual, and written formats to foster understanding, engagement, and alignment.
• Contribute novel research and insights to leading academic conferences and journals.

Additional duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Directly supervise a team of software and data engineers, including assigning tasks, conducting performance reviews, supporting career development, and providing ongoing coaching and feedback.
• Oversee team operations and project execution, managing workload distribution, ensuring accountability, and aligning engineering efforts with product and organizational goals.
• Drive AI innovation by identifying and integrating emerging AI, ML, and data science technologies to enhance performance and business value.
• Advance AI agent capabilities in reasoning, planning, tool usage, and fault recovery through scalable design, rapid prototyping, and production-ready solutions.
• Translate cutting-edge AI research into practical applications, optimizing LLMs, multi-agent systems, and computational tools.
• Develop and refine AI-powered tools and data models, ensuring seamless backend (Python, Rust, Go) and frontend (TypeScript/React) integration.
• Build scalable evaluation frameworks for model performance, reliability, and compliance, systematizing prompt engineering and optimization.
• Lead AI architecture and implementation, ensuring secure, high-performance, and adaptable AI systems.
• Optimize LLM training and fine-tuning, improving model efficiency, fairness, and adaptability.
• Mentor AI engineers and shape technical direction, fostering innovation and collaboration.
• Champion AI advancements through research contributions, open-source engagement, and community leadership.
• Promote AI adoption and responsible innovation, aligning with Harvard Business School?s mission and values.
• This role is responsible for other duties as assigned

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum of seven years? post-secondary education or relevant work experience

Additional Qualifications and Skills

Other Required Qualifications:

• 3+ years of experience leading the development of AI-driven applications, including conversational interfaces, chatbots, text summarizers, and recommendation engines and managing engineering teams
• Bachelors/Advanced Degree in Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Statistics or an equivalent technical discipline is highly desired
• Strong Python skills and ability to write clean, efficient, and scalable production grade code with demonstrated ability in mentoring and leading others by providing hands-on technical guidance such as code reviews.
• Experience working in agile environments, collaborating with cross-functional teams to iterate quickly and deliver high-impact AI solutions.
• Hands-on experience developing and deploying production-grade RAG pipelines, agentic information retrieval, and/or search systems.
• Ability to stay at the forefront of AI advancements, continuously researching academic papers and integrating cutting-edge techniques into practical applications.
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, with the ability to diagnose issues and make improvements through expertise in model evaluation and optimization.
• Experience with finetuning embedding models and tuning vector databases to improve performance of semantic search and retrieval systems.
• Experience with cloud computing platforms and tools - AWS
• Proficient with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and/or Keras.
• Proficiency with various prompting techniques, with a clear understanding of tradeoffs between prompting and finetuning.
• Experience creating technical roadmaps, driving AI strategy, and managing engineering teams.
• Experience integrating AI into consumer-facing web applications which scale efficiently in production environments.
• Experience with ML lifecycle management, monitoring, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience establishing model guardrails and developing bias detection and mitigation techniques for AI applications
• Knowledge of multimodal AI, personalization, and reinforcement learning.

Candidates with less experience may be considered at a lower salary grade (59).

Additional Information

This role has the possibility of being remote or hybrid. Remote work may be considered for individuals living at least 100-mile radius from campus and where all work will be completed within a state that Harvard is registered to do business in (CA - exempt roles only, CT, GA, IL, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VA, VT or WA). We consider hybrid to be a combination of remote and 3 days per week onsite work at our Boston, MA based campus. Specific hours and days onsite will be determined by business needs and are subject to change with appropriate advanced notice.We may conduct candidate interviews virtually (phone and/or via Zoom) and/or in-person for this role.As part of our evaluation, candidates are required to complete a Take Home Assignment / Hacker Rank assessment after clearing Technical Recruiter Screen. This assignment will test your specific skills/knowledge areas relevant to the role.Harvard Business School will not offer visa sponsorship for this opportunity.Culture of Inclusion: The work and well-being of HBS is profoundly strengthened by the diversity of our network and our differences in background, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and life experiences. Explore more about HBS work culture here https://www.hbs.edu/employment.

Benefits

We invite you to visit Harvard's Total Rewards website (https://hr.harvard.edu/totalrewards) to learn more about our outstanding benefits package, which may include:

• Paid Time Off: 3-4 weeks of accrued vacation time per year (3 weeks for support staff and 4 weeks for administrative/professional staff), 12 accrued sick days per year, 12.5 holidays plus a Winter Recess in December/January, 3 personal days per year (prorated based on date of hire), and up to 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents who are primary care givers.
• Health and Welfare: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits, disability and life insurance programs, along with voluntary benefits. Most coverage begins as of your start date.
• Work/Life and Wellness: Child and elder/adult care resources including on campus childcare centers, Employee Assistance Program, and wellness programs related to stress management, nutrition, meditation, and more.
• Retirement: University-funded retirement plan with contributions from 5% to 15% of eligible compensation, based on age and earnings with full vesting after 3 years of service.
• Tuition Assistance Program: Competitive program including $40 per class at the Harvard Extension School and reduced tuition through other participating Harvard graduate schools.
• Tuition Reimbursement: Program that provides 75% to 90% reimbursement up to $5,250 per calendar year for eligible courses taken at other accredited institutions.
• Professional Development: Programs and classes at little or no cost, including through the Harvard Center for Workplace Development and LinkedIn Learning.
• Commuting and Transportation: Various commuter options handled through the Parking Office, including discounted parking, half-priced public transportation passes and pre-tax transit passes, biking benefits, and more.
• Harvard Facilities Access, Discounts and Perks: Access to Harvard athletic and fitness facilities, libraries, campus events, credit union, and more, as well as discounts to various types of services (legal, financial, etc.) and cultural and leisure activities throughout metro-Boston.

Work Format

Hybrid (partially on-site, partially remote)Commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and BelongingHarvard University views equity, inclusion, and belonging as the pathway to achieving inclusive excellence and fostering a campus culture where everyone can thrive. We strive to create a community that draws upon the widest possible pool of talent to unify this excellence while fully embracing individuals from varied backgrounds, cultures, races, identities, life experiences, perspectives, beliefs, and values.EEO StatementWe are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions, or any other characteristic protected by law.

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