Director,AI Engineering – Enterprise AI Job Ottawa area,Ontario Canada,Software Development

It's fun to work in a company where people truly BELIEVE in what they're doing!

Lumentum Canada was awarded the 2022 National Capital Region’s Top Employers and the 2022 Career Directory Canada’s Best Employers for Recent Graduates .

Role Summary

We are seeking an experienced Director of AI Engineering to build and lead a world-class AI engineering team. This is a critical leadership role responsible for designing and delivering enterprise-grade AI applications that drive business value across Marketing, Finance, Legal, Enterprise Search, and R&D workflows. You will combine deep technical expertise with strong people leadership skills to grow the team, mentor engineers, establish best practices, and scale our AI capabilities across a globally distributed organization.

Key Responsibilities

Lead and grow an AI engineering team, recruiting top talent and building a high-performing culture focused on technical excellence

Design and oversee the delivery of enterprise AI applications across multiple business functions (Marketing, Finance, Legal, Search, R&D)

Establish technical standards, architecture patterns, and code review practices that ensure software engineering excellence and maintainability

Mentor engineers in modern AI/ML systems design, cloud infrastructure, production deployment, and operational excellence

Collaborate with product, data science, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into robust technical solutions

Drive technology decisions around AI frameworks, cloud platforms, and infrastructure to optimize for cost, performance, and reliability

Build and maintain systems for data pipelines, model serving, monitoring, and continuous improvement of AI applications

Lead technical strategy for scaling AI capabilities, including considerations for enterprise security, compliance, and governance

Required Qualifications

15+ years of professional software engineering experience with demonstrated progression to senior/leadership roles

3+ years of experience with AI/ML systems (including LLMs, generative AI, RAG architectures, or similar modern AI applications) in production environments

3+ years of technical leadership experience managing and mentoring engineering teams

Deep hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and modern deployment practices

Strong expertise in Python and/or other languages commonly used for AI/ML applications

Proven ability to work effectively in globally distributed teams with experience managing across time zones

Strong understanding of software engineering best practices: version control, testing, code review, CI/CD, observability

Track record of shipping production systems at scale with focus on reliability, performance, and maintainability

Excellent communication skills; ability to articulate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in manufacturing, industrial, or enterprise software environments

Familiarity with enterprise systems (ERP, CRM, workflow automation) and integration patterns

Background in developing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems or knowledge management applications

Experience with MLOps, model monitoring, and LLM evaluation frameworks

Expertise in establishing and scaling engineering culture, documentation, and knowledge sharing practices

Experience with enterprise security, compliance, and data governance requirements

Track record of building systems that integrate with modern API ecosystems and third-party AI services

Director, AI Engineering – Enterprise AI