Director, AI Innovation & Emerging Capabilities

The Opportunity:

• The Director, AI Innovation & Emerging Capabilities leads the scouting, introduction, and scaling of AI and disruptive digital technologies across R&D.
  
• This role serves as the function's primary horizon scanner and innovation translator, converting external signals into concrete R&D opportunities and building structured pathways from early-stage pilots to scaled capabilities.
  
• The Director operates with a future-back mindset, ensuring the organization is not caught off-guard by technological disruption but instead positioned to capitalize on it.
  

• Continuously monitor the external AI and disruptive technology landscape to identify signals, trends, and emerging capabilities with potential R&D relevance
  
• Maintain a living map of the external innovation environment including academia, startups, vendors, and adjacent industries
  
• Apply a future-back approach: define where R&D must be in 3-5 years, then work backward to identify the capability gaps and disruptive forces that must be addressed today
  
• Establish and manage a network of external relationships (research institutes, technology partners, innovation ecosystems) to maintain leading-edge awareness
  
• Triage and assess emerging threats and opportunities using structured evaluation frameworks before they surface in mainstream discourse
  

• Translate complex external technology signals into concise, R&D-relevant opportunity briefs that leadership can act on
  
• Identify and articulate capability gaps between the current R&D operating model and what disruptive trends demand
  
• Introduce capabilities and approaches that would not organically surface through internal channels, deliberately expanding the organization's aperture of what is possible
  
• Develop compelling narratives and business cases for disruptive capabilities, tailored to senior R&D and cross-functional audiences
  

• Design and govern a structured pipeline from exploratory pilot to production-scale capability, with defined stage-gates, success criteria, and go/no-go decision logic
  
• Lead proof-of-concept and pilot initiatives for high-potential disruptive technologies, ensuring rapid learning cycles and clear value demonstration
  
• Partner with delivery and product teams to transition successful pilots into scalable, embedded capabilities that measurably improve R&D execution
  
• Define and track performance metrics demonstrating that disruptive capabilities are delivering tangible, quantifiable impact on R&D outcomes
  

• Provide R&D leadership with a clear, regularly updated view of the innovation landscape; presenting insights in formats that drive decision-making, not just awareness
  
• Serve as a credible internal voice on AI and digital disruption, challenging conventional thinking and advocating for proactive capability investment
  
• Contribute to strategic planning cycles by ensuring innovation foresight is embedded as a structural input, not an afterthought
  
• Champion a future-back culture within the team, modeling and reinforcing the discipline of working from desired future states toward present-day actions
  

• Support team operating model design and contribute to intake and prioritization processes
  
• Shape high-value AI opportunity identification by surfacing externally validated use cases to the portfolio
  
• Partner with adoption leads to ensure new capabilities are introduced with sufficient user context and change support
  

• 8+ years of experience in technology strategy, innovation, AI/ML, or digital transformation roles, ideally within or serving R&D-intensive industries