Head of AI Research and Development

Lead with purpose and keep growing. See your future here.
Vanguard’s Enterprise AI and Research (EAiR) team is actively working on advancing AI innovation by integrating cutting-edge concepts into the Vanguard AI ecosystem, establishing strategic AI partnerships, and building enterprise-level AI capabilities to empower Vanguard clients with advanced AI research and technology. The team aims to ultimately accelerate critical business solutions with AI capabilities. Some of the team’s areas of research include areas around Agentic AI, Responsible AI, and Cognitive AI Architecture.

Role Overview:
The Head AI R&D plays a pivotal role in driving innovation and shaping the future of AI Research at our organization. This position requires a blend of strategic vision, technical expertise, and exceptional leadership skills to oversee a dynamic team of scientists and engineers responsible for advancing AI technologies.  You will be accountable for setting the research agenda, fostering a culture of creativity and experimentation, driving strategic AI partnership and ensuring the delivery of high-impact AI solutions that align with our business objectives. Additionally, you will collaborate closely with cross-functional stakeholders to integrate AI capabilities into existing products and services, drive release strategy and establish partnerships with academic institutions and industry partners to stay abreast of cutting-edge advancements in AI. A strong background in deep learning, natural language processing, or computer vision, coupled with experience leading large-scale R&D initiatives, is essential for success in this role.

Responsibilities:

• Lead research and development of new and innovative techniques to solve Artificial intelligence/Machine learning problems, supporting strategic business goals within the domain of Deep Learning, Generative AI, Natural language processing, Responsible AI, and Model Optimization.

• Manage a team of AI engineers and scientists responsible for establishing and implementing strategies to support Vanguard’s AI vision, developing proprietary AI solutions, and identifying themes for AI Research and development.

• Engage with Vanguard leadership to understand and probe business processes to develop hypotheses and own the AI research agenda; bring structure to requests and translate them into an ML approach.

• Build, leverage internal assets, partner with external solution providers and vendor solutions to mature the use of advanced AI techniques and technologies and drive scalable business outcomes.

• Drive large-scale R&D initiatives, managing resources, timelines, and risks effectively.

• Monitor and report on AI R&D progress, trends, and competitive landscape to senior management.

• Ensure timely delivery of AI Research prototypes, maintaining a balance between innovation, quality, and efficiency.

• Establish and maintain partnerships with academic institutions and industry partners to keep up with cutting-edge advancements in AI.

• Recruit, hire, train, and develop top AI talent, building a diverse and inclusive team.

​

Qualifications:

• PhD or Master in a relevant discipline such as Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Physics, Electrical & Computer Engineering.

• At least 10+ years of experience in AI research in industry or academic setting

• A proven record of AI Research leadership roles or similar capacity.

• Strong expertise in various AI/ML concepts and paradigm. Strong expertise in at least two or more of the following areas: Speech Recognition, Natural Language Processing, Reinforcement Learning, Knowledge Graph, Time-Series Analysis, or Generative AI.

• Experience with machine learning development lifecycle and AI/ML methods such as Transformers, Diffusion Models, SHAP, LLM and GenAI etc.

• Strong software engineering capabilities and hands-on experience with various machine learning and deep learning frameworks including numpy, scikit-learn, keras, PyTorch and Tensorflow

• A strong understanding of the real-world advantages and drawbacks of various algorithms and the ability to measure success.

• Ability to write clean, understandable code that follows leading industry standards and practices and is well-documented, and to build easily reproducible models.

How We Work

Vanguard has implemented a hybrid working model for the majority of our crew members, designed to capture the benefits of enhanced flexibility while enabling in-person learning, collaboration, and connection. We believe our mission-driven and highly collaborative culture is a critical enabler to support long-term client outcomes and enrich the employee experience.