Director, AI Forward Deployed Researcher

Director, AI Forward-Deployed Researcher

About TELUS Digital

TELUS Digital is a leading digital customer experience innovator that designs, builds, and delivers next-generation solutions, including the Fuel iX generative AI platform - an enterprise-scale platform proven with over 50,000 users that enables organisations to safely manage their AI applications, foundation models, and data sources.

Role Purpose

The Forward Deployed Researcher, Director is a strategic leader, advanced AI research specialist, and manager who directly oversees and engages in the highest-value customer implementations. This role is responsible for driving frontier AI research into production, setting the strategic technical direction for enterprise clients, and managing a team of Forward Deployed Researchers and Engineers. This role operates at the critical intersection of cutting-edge research, software engineering, executive-level strategic consulting, and team management.

As a Forward Deployed Researcher, Director, you will embed directly within Fortune 500 and highly regulated customer organizations to advance frontier AI implementations, shape AI strategy, deliver bespoke production systems, and build world-class technical teams. Unlike traditional research leaders who remain in labs or remote environments, you will be embedded within customer teams - walking the halls of banks, healthcare organizations, and tech companies - to understand their unique challenges, conduct applied research, and lead the delivery of transformative AI solutions grounded in both frontier techniques and practical enterprise constraints.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic AI Research & Executive Consulting (Primary)

• Act as a trusted technical and research advisor to customer executive leadership (CTOs, Heads of AI, VPs of Engineering, Board Members) on overall AI strategy, roadmap, and competitive positioning
• Translate frontier AI research and complex technical concepts into actionable business strategies and implementation plans that justify premium engagement and drive measurable ROI
• Shape customer understanding of what constitutes 'production-ready,' 'scalable,' and 'competitive' AI systems within regulated industries
• Conduct market and technical landscape analysis to inform customer AI strategy and identify emerging opportunities
• Provide thought leadership on AI best practices, emerging technologies, research trends, and industry benchmarks
• Identify opportunities for AI adoption, value creation, and competitive advantage within customer organizations
• Mentor customer AI leadership teams on research methodologies, experimentation, and validation practices

2. Team Leadership & Capability Building

• Manage, mentor, and scale a team of Forward Deployed Researchers and Engineers embedded at high-value customer organizations
• Oversee the development and delivery of bespoke, research-backed production systems across multiple, concurrent customer engagements
• Establish best practices, technical frameworks, methodologies, and accelerators for the team that benefit multiple customers and scale across TELUS Digital
• Recruit, develop, and retain top-tier Forward Deployed talent; create career development pathways and technical competency frameworks
• Serve as an internal thought leader, sharing research insights, lessons learned, and best practices across the Forward Deployed Engineer community
• Mentor junior Forward Deployed Engineers and Solutions Engineers on technical, consulting, and leadership skills
• Foster a culture of innovation, customer-centricity, continuous improvement, and technical excellence within the team
• Establish metrics, KPIs, and performance management systems for team success and customer impact

3. Customer-Embedded Research & Production Delivery

• Lead high-impact, applied AI research initiatives to address the customer's most complex and ambiguous challenges during 3-6 month+ onsite engagements
• Design and implement advanced GenAI/LLM solutions (e.g., advanced RAG, multi-agent systems, custom fine-tuning, synthetic data generation, RLHF) tailored to customer's unique requirements and constraints
• Build production-ready AI systems addressing data quality, evaluation, governance, and deployment challenges in regulated environments
• Conduct frontier AI experiments (novel architectures, training methodologies, evaluation frameworks) with direct applicability to customer use cases
• Ensure all production systems meet stringent security, compliance, performance, and scalability requirements for Fortune 500 and highly regulated clients
• Integrate TELUS Digital capabilities with customer infrastructure, data platforms, and workflows
• Architect systems that customers can operate and evolve long-term with reduced dependency on external support
• Own end-to-end delivery from discovery, research, and validation through production deployment and optimization

4. Cross-Functional Collaboration & Product Influence

• Partner with TELUS Digital Product, Engineering, and Research teams to leverage platform capabilities and inform product roadmap based on customer research insights
• Collaborate with Sales and Account teams on opportunity expansion, account strategy, and customer success
• Represent customer voice internally to drive product, service, and research improvements
• Participate in analyst relations and thought leadership initiatives to elevate TELUS Digital's market position
• Work with other Forward Deployed Directors and Engineers to share learnings and establish organizational best practices

5. Technical Excellence & Innovation

• Stay at the frontier of AI models, frameworks, and deployment patterns; maintain hands-on expertise in cutting-edge areas
• Experiment with emerging AI technologies and assess applicability to customer challenges and competitive positioning
• Publish or present technical work, contributing to TELUS Digital's thought leadership and industry recognition
• Build and maintain expertise in frontier areas (LLMs, multimodal AI, agentic systems, synthetic data, RLHF, evaluation frameworks, etc.)
• Document technical approaches, architectures, research methodologies, and lessons learned
• Contribute to open-source projects or TELUS Digital's technical community

Qualifications

Required

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering and AI/ML experience with production systems
• 4+ years in senior leadership or management roles managing technical teams of at least 5+ professionals (e.g., managing Forward Deployed Engineers, Solution Engineers, or Research teams)
• Proven ability to serve as a strategic advisor and technical authority to C-level stakeholders
• Deep expertise in frontier GenAI/LLMs, including: RAG systems and vector databases, Agentic AI and multi-agent systems, Fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and in-context learning, Evaluation frameworks and metrics for LLM systems, Production MLOps and deployment
• Hands-on proficiency with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and modern AI/ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, Hugging Face)
• Proven track record of success in ambiguous, complex environments with a high degree of autonomy
• Excellent communication skills across technical, research, and executive audiences
• Self-directed and resourceful - comfortable operating independently at customer sites and leading without direct authority
• Customer-centric mindset with ability to build trust and credibility quickly with C-level stakeholders
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, AI/ML, or related field

Preferred

• Advanced degree (MS/PhD in Computer Science, AI/ML, or related field)
• Experience at AI platform/research companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, Palantir, Scale AI, Cohere, etc.) in research, Forward Deployed, or leadership roles
• Experience at top-tier consulting firms (McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte) in technical or engineering leadership roles
• Published technical work or recognized AI/ML expertise, contributing to thought leadership and industry recognition
• Prior work in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare) with compliance requirements and enterprise complexity
• Track record of mentoring engineers and building high-performing teams
• Computer vision and/or data annotation platform expertise
• Multilingual capabilities for global customer engagement
• Open-source contributions or active participation in AI research community
• Experience building bespoke solutions vs. configuring off-the-shelf products

What Success Looks Like

First 90 Days

• Successfully embedded at assigned customer account(s)
• Built trust and credibility with customer technical and executive leadership
• Conducted discovery and scoped research initiatives aligned with customer strategy
• Established team structure, processes, and success metrics for Forward Deployed team
• Delivered initial research insights, POC, or quick wins demonstrating value
• Established clear research roadmap and delivery milestones

Year 1

• Delivered production AI system(s) informed by applied research, driving measurable customer business outcomes
• Customer views TELUS Digital as indispensable technical and research partner
• Identified and scoped additional research and implementation opportunities within customer organization(s)
• Mentored customer AI teams and Forward Deployed team members, building their research and production capabilities
• Contributed technical and research insights that influenced TELUS Digital product/service offerings
• Built reusable patterns, frameworks, or accelerators benefiting other customers and Forward Deployed Engineers
• Established team as high-performing unit with strong retention and customer satisfaction

Ongoing

• Consistently delivers high-quality, production-ready, research-backed AI solutions across multiple customer engagements
• Maintains deep, trusted relationships with customer technical and executive leadership
• Expands TELUS Digital footprint and influence within customer organizations
• Serves as technical authority and thought leader in AI research and enterprise implementation
• Mentors Forward Deployed Engineers, Solutions Engineers, and customer teams
• Contribut…