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About This Role
Head of Data \& AI
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Location: Lake Mary, FL (Hybrid)
Department: Technology, AI \& Product Experience (TPX)
Reports To: Vice President, Technology, AI \& Product Experience
Status: Full\-Time \| Exempt
About The IIA
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The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) is the global leader and recognized authority for the internal audit profession. We are dedicated to advancing the profession worldwide through education, advocacy, certifications, and professional resources. Guided by our values of People First, Integrity, Collaboration, Accountability, and Innovation, we provide a collaborative, purpose\-driven workplace where employees can grow professionally while making a global impact.
Why Join The IIA?
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- Make a global impact by advancing the internal audit profession.
- Work in a collaborative, values\-driven culture.
- Be part of an organization that values innovation and continuous learning.
- Grow your career while contributing to meaningful work that strengthens organizations around the world.
- Join a team committed to integrity, accountability, and putting people first.
Position Summary
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The Head of Data \& AI is a strategic and hands\-on technology leader responsible for building and leading IIA's enterprise data, analytics, and artificial intelligence capabilities. Reporting to the Vice President of Technology, AI \& Product Experience, you'll define the strategy and roadmap for data engineering, analytics, AI, and governance while leading a high\-performing team and partnering across the organization to deliver secure, scalable, and business\-driven solutions.
This is a unique opportunity to build the organization's modern data and AI capability, establish enterprise standards, and help shape how AI creates measurable value across the business.
Work Arrangement
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This is a hybrid position based in Lake Mary, Florida, combining in\-office collaboration with remote work.
What You'll Do
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- Lead the strategy and execution of enterprise data engineering, analytics, AI, and governance initiatives.
- Build and evolve IIA's cloud data platform, including lakehouse architecture, data pipelines, analytics, and governance capabilities.
- Deliver production\-ready AI and machine learning solutions that drive measurable business outcomes.
- Recruit, mentor, and develop a high\-performing Data \& AI team while partnering with implementation vendors.
- Establish best practices for data governance, AI governance, model evaluation, and responsible AI adoption.
- Collaborate with Engineering, Technical Product Management, Information Security, Legal, and business leaders to deliver innovative technology solutions.
- Communicate technical strategy and business value effectively to executive leadership.
Qualifications
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### Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
- 7\+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics, machine learning, or AI, including 2\+ years leading technical teams.
- Experience designing and managing cloud\-based data platforms using Azure, Databricks, Spark, Delta Lake, or similar technologies.
- Experience deploying and supporting production AI, machine learning, or LLM\-based solutions.
- Strong proficiency in SQL and Python.
- Experience with data governance, data quality, cataloging, lineage, and access management.
- Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
### Preferred Qualifications
- Experience implementing MLOps and AI governance practices.
- Experience in a regulated, nonprofit, association, or professional services environment.
- Familiarity with Azure cloud services, SaaS platforms, and enterprise architecture.
- Knowledge of AI governance frameworks such as NIST AI RMF or ISO/IEC 42001\.
Equal Opportunity Employer
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The Institute of Internal Auditors is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all employees are valued, respected, and empowered to succeed.
Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 4,317 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 70% of the market. At The Institute of Internal Auditors, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $214,900 based on 6,420 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($287,500) and Research Engineer ($272,100). By seniority level: Entry: $110,000; Mid: $194,400; Senior: $227,400; Director: $274,554; VP: $241,000.
The Institute of Internal Auditors AI Hiring
The Institute of Internal Auditors has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Lake Mary, FL, US.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 15% (635 positions) offer remote work, while 3,657 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (1,650 roles, $220,000 median); San Francisco (1,335 roles, $265,000 median); Los Angeles (708 roles, $214,112 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 4,317 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 138 entry-level, 2,071 mid-level, 1,655 senior, and 453 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 15% of the market (635 positions). The remaining 3,657 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $215,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $266,300. The 90th percentile reaches $320,790. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($287,500 median, 34 roles); Research Engineer ($272,100 median, 227 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($244,000 median, 23 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 4,317 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (3,004), Data Scientist (345), AI Software Engineer (309). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (138) are outnumbered by mid-level (2,071) and senior (1,655) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 453 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 15% of all AI roles (635 positions), with 3,657 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $215,000. Top-quartile roles start at $266,300, and the 90th percentile reaches $320,790. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $287,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $145,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (2,249 postings), Aws (1,224 postings), Azure (938 postings), Rag (915 postings), Gcp (660 postings), Pytorch (640 postings), Prompt Engineering (624 postings), Kubernetes (559 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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