Director of Artificial Intelligence

Position Description – Director of AI Transformation

Business Group/Dept: Corporate Headquarters/AI Operations & Analytics

FLSA: Exempt

Reports To: Chief Financial Officer

Date: September 24, 2026

Purpose of the Position

This is a newly created role. The company employs 1,200+ employees across 35+ offices in environmental and infrastructure services. The Director of AI Transformation owns the company's AI strategy and is accountable for delivering it: prioritizing the AI initiatives with real P&L impact, leading them through vendors and partners to adoption, and building the governance under which AI is used. Reporting to the CFO, the role works directly with the Executive Leadership and other business leaders across the company. The mandate is measurable business value – including but not limited to sales leads, conversion rates, revenue, gross margin, and EBITDA – not research, support, or training.

Essential Position Responsibilities

AI Strategy

• Define and own the company's AI strategy and roadmap, aligned with business goals and the annual operating plan
• Identify and prioritize AI opportunities by ROI, feasibility, and strategic impact in partnership with functional leaders, and own the business case for each
• Measure the impact of AI initiatives by business outcomes (revenue generated, cost removed, risk reduced), not by usage

Delivery & Vendor Management

• Lead AI initiatives from business case through pilot, production, and adoption
• Lead the selection of AI vendors and AI software partners and manage them to scope, budget, and schedule, jointly with IT
• Recommend when to build, buy, or combine approaches; translate business requirements into specifications vendors can build to, and challenge vendor designs and estimates
• Build the year-one AI budget for Executive and Board approval, then manage it across tooling, vendors, experimentation, and enablement

Adoption & Enablement

• Deliver the role-specific training each initiative needs for adoption, in the functions it touches, through HR, the AI champion network, and the functional owners
• Build a structured AI champion network in each function and coach the AI owners inside each function, so that adoption scales beyond the central role
• Lead adoption and change management for each initiative, with adoption measured from the first week

Governance & Risk

• Establish the AI governance structure, including an AI committee that reviews initiatives, approved tools, and standards
• In partnership with Legal, Compliance, IT, and HR, define the approved tools, data-handling rules, acceptable-use standards, and guardrails for AI, so that the company is protected without slowing adoption
• Other duties as assigned

First Twelve Months

• Two AI initiatives in production with measured business impact, and a third in pilot
• AI governance structure and acceptable-use standards established
• AI literacy program launched in the functions the first initiatives touch
• Initiatives that fail their pilot stopped or descoped on evidence

Qualifications

Required

• 5–10 years of progressive experience in consulting, transformation, or operations roles, including 2+ years leading AI deployments with real users, and has taken at least two AI initiatives from business case to production and adoption through vendors or implementation partners, with measured business outcomes
• Has driven change in a multi-site or field-based operating business, as an employee or an embedded advisor, and can describe the frontline process that changed as a result
• AI literacy: a working understanding of AI tools, large language models, and automation platforms, including context windows, retrieval-augmented generation, context engineering and advanced prompting, agents, and the current limits of the tools, sufficient to direct vendors and challenge designs
• Uses AI tools daily and has built working automations, prototypes, or analyses with AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Codex; production deployment is not required
• Strong executive communication, stakeholder management, and financial acumen; credible with the CFO, the CEO, and business leaders, and equally credible with the Head of IT and vendors

Preferred

• Has defined an AI or transformation strategy and prioritized a portfolio of initiatives on P&L impact
• Has established governance frameworks and guardrails for technology use with Legal and Security
• Knowledge of the environmental services, remediation, construction, or related specialty contracting industries

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

AI Strategy

• AI strategy and roadmap approved as part of the annual business plan, with initiatives, owners, and targets
• Realized P&L impact of AI initiatives versus business case, reported quarterly

Delivery & Vendor Management

• AI initiatives reaching production and sustained use within the timeline in their approved business case
• Vendor and software partner delivery against agreed scope, budget, and schedule

Adoption & Enablement

• Adoption of deployed initiatives by their target roles within 90 days of rollout, at the level set in the business case
• Time saved, quality improvements, and cost impact reported to leadership quarterly

Governance & Risk

• AI governance structure and acceptable-use standards in place and operating
• AI-related risks identified and managed through the company's existing risk and compliance processes

Location: Dallas metropolitan area (corporate office in Westlake, Texas); hybrid

Minimum Education: Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, Business, Finance, or a related field

Travel: 10% – 25%