Director of AI Initiatives & Development Operations

As Director of Artificial Intelligence Initiatives & Development Operations, you will lead high-impact projects and operational initiatives that drive efficiency, digital transformation, and lasting value across ISG. Your focus includes overseeing diverse strategic efforts, championing technology implementations, advancing proprietary software development, and enabling robust data integration and reporting on a modern Azure cloud foundation. You will also identify and deliver practical applications of artificial intelligence that improve decision‑making and operational performance.

Your leadership will deliver measurable improvements that optimize processes, enhance analytics adoption, and support enterprise performance goals.

• Spearhead high-profile special initiative projects that create lasting impact and sustainable efficiencies within the organization.
• Provide leadership and oversight for major IT and digital transformation projects, including enterprise-wide software implementations, cloud migrations, and complex integrations.
• Direct cross-functional teams and ensure alignment with ISG business strategies and project objectives.

• Design, manage, and maintain proprietary software applications using technologies such as .NET Core and Blazor, deployed on Azure services (e.g., Azure App Service, Azure Functions).
• Develop and maintain best-in‑class integrations between ERP, payroll, and CRM systems to ensure data integrity and workflow automation, leveraging tools such as Azure Data Factory, Logic Apps, and API Management.
• Apply secure development practices and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Azure Dev Ops or Git Hub Actions) to deliver reliable, maintainable releases.

• Own the architecture, operation, and roadmap of ISG's Azure SQL data warehouse, enabling detailed reporting and enterprise data analysis.
• Design and maintain dimensional data models (star/snowflake schemas), fact and dimension tables, and a governed semantic layer for consistent enterprise metrics.
• Build and optimize ETL/ELT pipelines that ingest data from ERP, payroll, CRM, and operational sources, with data quality checks, lineage, and monitoring.
• Evaluate and, where appropriate, adopt modern analytics platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure Synapse Analytics, or Databricks to scale the warehouse and support advanced analytics.
• Establish data governance standards including master data management, data cataloging, access controls, and retention in partnership with IT security and compliance.

• Oversee ISG's Azure environment supporting development, integration, and analytics workloads, including resource organization, landing zone standards, and environment strategy (dev/test/prod).
• Manage cloud cost optimization (Fin Ops) practices including budgeting, tagging, rightsizing, and reserved capacity planning.
• Ensure cloud workloads meet security, identity, and compliance requirements using Microsoft Entra , role‑based access control, Azure Key Vault, network controls, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
• Implement monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery practices using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and related services to meet availability and recovery objectives.
• Apply infrastructure‑as‑code practices (e.g., Bicep, ARM templates, or Terraform) to standardize and automate deployments.

• Identify, prioritize, and deliver AI and machine learning use cases that improve gross margin, labor utilization, forecasting, and operational efficiency.
• Lead implementation of AI solutions using platforms such as Azure OpenAI…