Director, Software Engineering - AI Enablement (P2213)

84.51° Overview:

84.51° is a retail data science, insights and media company. We help The Kroger Co., consumer packaged goods companies, agencies, publishers and affiliates create more personalized and valuable experiences for shoppers across the path to purchase.

Powered by cutting-edge science, we utilize first-party retail data from more than 62 million U.S. households sourced through the Kroger Plus loyalty card program to fuel a more customer-centric journey using 84.51° Insights, 84.51° Loyalty Marketing and our retail media advertising solution, Kroger Precision Marketing.

Join us at 84.51°!

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As Director, Software Engineering - AI Enablement, you will play a pivotal role in designing and implementing cutting-edge artificial intelligence solutions. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams of Data Scientists, Research Scientists, Software Engineers, and Product Leads to understand business requirements, identify opportunities for AI integration, and ensure our platforms enable development of scalable and robust AI systems. This role will be responsible for partnering with 84.51° teams to understand business requirements in order to design, test and evolve a strategic prompting strategy to guide AI responses.  The successful candidate will be an innovative, forward thinking technology leader with a relentless focus on customers and inspiring people. They will be a natural networker across roles and teams alike. 

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Execute the vision, goals, priorities and work alongside the team to accomplish them. Ensure high-quality technical solutions.

• Leading and coaching direct reports in the performance of responsibilities; providing ongoing feedback to direct reports and completing performance reviews.

• Drive continuous improvement to deliver solutions that are at the forefront of industry leading techniques while also adhering to best practices.
• Directly support technical mentoring and growth of team’s technical maturity through pairing and other coaching techniques. Grow new mentors from emerging talent.
• Support a culture of learning and development. Promote and enable technical skills development in support of high-quality code components, systems, and solutions.
• Partner with Data Scientists, Engineers, and Product talent to ensure our platform strategy delivers against requirements, scope, and system deployment need.
• Develop and maintain tooling frameworks to establish and enforce best practices for effective prompting in AI-powered solutions.
• Help lead the technical vision and strategy for prompt engineering, ensuring innovative and efficient approaches to drive excellence in AI applications.
• Employ solid change management, performance measurement, automation, and well thought out solution implementation methodologies to ensure AI Acceleration platform architecture is stable and reliable.
• Building relationships with key partners within the Kroger Technology organization to share best practices, help accelerate the growth of both organizations and deliver joint initiatives as appropriate.
• Leverage a servant leadership approach in the recruiting, motivating, mentoring, and growing world-class teams and creating followership that as a leader, teams want to work with.
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues at all levels in both verbal and written communications and preparing and presenting strategic visions and presentations to executive leadership team.
• Driving for continuous improvement in operational effectiveness within Engineering and across 84.51°.
• Work cross functionally to align strategy, methodology and execution

QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Computer Engineering or another heavily technical program
• 10+ years’ experience in a hands on technical role leading/mentoring by example
• Be a change agent and foster a learn by doing environment
• Strong software development leadership skills bringing industry proven best practices to fruition
• Experience building enterprise level software solutions with solid proficiencies in performance tuning and debugging.
• Exceptional judgment, strategic thinking, and creative problem-solving skills. Strong analytical mind.
• Comfortable with thinking outside the box and challenging the status quo, respectfully and courageously, to deliver results in a dynamic environment.
• Mastery in many of the following tech skills and principles:
• Agile Experience
• Git
• SOA and Microservice design principles
• CI/CD
• Automated Testing

Desired Characteristics & Technical Skills:

• Knowledgeable and experienced in the following tech skills and principles:
• Technical Management experience
• Python
• FastAPI
• Experience with Azure, Azure AI Studio, GCP, Vertex AI 
• Experience with MLOps/LLMOps patterns and solutions  
• Experience with Databricks, ML Flow 
• Experience with GitHub, GitHub Actions, Harness or related tools 
• Experience with AKS a plus
• DevOps principles

IMPORTANT INFO

This is a Hybrid position. Candidates must be able to come into the office on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of each week. We have locations in Cincinnati, OH, Chicago, IL, Deerfield, IL, New York, NY, and Portland, OR. There are no remote options for this position. 

We are NOT working with Staffing Firms, Consulting Companies, or any other 3rd parties on this position. 

Full-time only. No contracts. No C2C. 

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