Manager, AI and ML Engineering

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Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Management Technical 715 Pay Range: $174,700.00 - $288,200.00Job Description

The Manager, AI and ML Engineering is a leader in building high-performing teams that turn AI opportunities into production-ready solutions. This leader combines strong people leadership, technical judgment, and a bias for delivery to guide the design, development, evaluation, and continuous improvement of AI applications and services. Working closely with Product, Engineering, Enterprise Data, Architecture, Security, and business partners, the manager translates strategy into execution, develops talent, establishes engineering excellence, and helps scale responsible AI across the university.

Reporting to the Director, Enterprise AI Platforms, this role leads the AI Engineering team and supports the Director in advancing engineering strategy, technical standards, delivery practices, and organizational priorities across the broader Enterprise AI Platforms organization. Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Leads, develops, and inspires a high-performing team of AI Engineers through clear expectations, coaching, accountability, and purposeful career development.
• Translates AI strategy and organizational priorities into an actionable team roadmap, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.
• Leads the design, development, testing, evaluation, deployment, and continuous improvement of production AI applications and services.
• Establishes and reinforces engineering standards, design patterns, development practices, and quality expectations that improve reliability, scalability, security, and developer productivity.
• Partners with the Director, Enterprise AI Platforms, to shape AI Engineering strategy, technical priorities, organizational planning, and cross-team initiatives.
• Drives delivery of complex, high-impact AI initiatives, balancing near-term business outcomes with long-term technical sustainability.
• Partners closely with AI Platform Operations and other technology teams to ensure AI solutions are production-ready, observable, secure, scalable, and operationally sustainable.
• Collaborates with Product, Engineering, Enterprise Data, Architecture, Security, Legal, and business stakeholders to translate opportunities into practical AI solutions.
• Provides technical leadership and guidance on generative AI, large language models, agentic systems, retrieval-augmented generation, AI application architecture, evaluation, and emerging AI technologies.
• Builds reusable engineering capabilities, patterns, components, and practices that accelerate delivery and enable teams to develop AI solutions consistently.
• Champions responsible AI engineering practices, including appropriate evaluation, security, privacy, governance, risk management, and quality controls.
• Uses engineering metrics, product outcomes, quality measures, and operational signals to identify opportunities, manage risk, and continuously improve team performance and solution value.
• Leads technical discussions and decisions, clearly articulating tradeoffs, recommendations, risks, and implications to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Evaluates emerging AI technologies, development frameworks, models, tools, and vendor capabilities and translates relevant advances into practical engineering opportunities.
• Creates a culture of innovation, experimentation, learning, and continuous improvement while maintaining a strong focus on delivery and production quality.
• Represents AI Engineering with senior stakeholders and cross-functional partners, building trust and alignment around technical direction and delivery.
• Mentors engineers and technical leaders across the broader organization and contributes to the development of enterprise AI engineering practices.
• Communicates engineering strategy, progress, risks, outcomes, and recommendations clearly to the Director and other organizational leaders.

Competencies:

Organizational Impact

• Leads a professional engineering team responsible for executing strategic and operational priorities with measurable impact on organizational outcomes.
• Plans and prioritizes work, allocates team capacity, and removes barriers to effective delivery.
• Contributes to workforce planning, resource decisions, vendor considerations, and investment discussions for the AI Engineering function.

Problem Solving and Decision Making

• Solves complex, ambiguous problems using strong technical judgment, structured analysis, experimentation, and practical engineering experience.
• Makes sound decisions that balance business value, technical quality, security, risk, scalability, maintainability, and speed.
• Anticipates technical and delivery risks and establishes pragmatic approaches to mitigate them.

Communication and Influence

• Communicates complex AI and software engineering concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Builds alignment across functions and influences decisions through credibility, clarity, evidence, and strong relationships.
• Represents the AI Engineering team effectively with senior leaders, partners, and stakeholders.

Leadership and Talent Management

• Manages and develops AI engineering professionals, creating an environment of high standards, accountability, collaboration, inclusion, and continuous learning.
• Recruits, coaches, retains, and develops talent while establishing clear expectations and meaningful growth opportunities.
• Conducts performance management and career development activities and participates in hiring, promotion, and compensation decisions.
• Builds leadership capacity within the team by delegating effectively, developing emerging leaders, and creating opportunities for engineers to expand their impact.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Statistics, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 3+ years of progressively responsible professional experience in software engineering, AI engineering, machine learning, or a related technical discipline.
• 1+ years of experience leading or managing software, AI, or engineering professionals, including responsibility for delivery and team development.
• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering production software or AI solutions in a modern cloud environment.
• Strong software engineering and problem-solving skills, with experience in Python and/or other modern programming languages.
• Practical experience with AI application development, generative AI, large language models, or related AI technologies.
• Strong understanding of software engineering practices including architecture, testing, version control, CI/CD, observability, and production operations.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business or technical problems into clear engineering approaches, priorities, and deliverables.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to convey complex technical concepts and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to build strong cross-functional partnerships and lead complex initiatives through influence and collaboration.
• Excellent critical thinking, planning, prioritization, organization, and execution skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• PhD. degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related discipline.
• Experience with enterprise AI platforms, LLM applications, agentic systems, retrieval-augmented generation, AI evaluation, or AI observability.
• Experience with Databricks and/or AWS.
• Experience establishing reusable AI engineering patterns, shared components, developer tooling, or engineering standards.
• Experience working in higher education or another complex, highly regulated enterprise environment.
• Experience partnering with Security, Privacy, Risk, Legal, Architecture, and Enterprise Data teams on responsible AI delivery.
• Experience evaluating AI models, frameworks, platforms, or vendor solutions and translating findings into engineering decisions.

Experience in lieu of education:

Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements. Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is at the discretion of the hiring manager.

Travel:

This position requires occasional travel, including attendance at designated company summits, conferences, visits to company locations, and other business-related events as needed.

This opportunity is onsite 5 days in the Raleigh, NC office.

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Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave. How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at [email protected].

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.