Director, AI

Summary

Join Headspace as the Director, AI and lead groundbreaking AI initiatives in mental healthcare. You will define and execute the AI strategy, build scalable AI infrastructure, and ensure responsible AI development. This role requires collaboration with cross-functional teams, including clinicians and engineers. You will need extensive experience in AI, machine learning, and team leadership. Headspace offers a competitive salary and benefits package, including comprehensive healthcare, wellness stipends, and generous parental leave.

Requirements

• Proven Leadership: 10+ years of experience building, leading, and managing high-performing, innovative AI, machine learning, and/or data science teams, with a history of successfully delivering impactful, responsible AI-driven solutions at scale
• Technical Expertise: Deep understanding of machine learning frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch), AI methodologies, and modern engineering tools, with hands-on experience deploying solutions in cloud environments (preferably AWS)

Responsibilities

• Drive AI Vision & Strategy: Define and execute a strategic roadmap for AI/ML solutions while staying at the forefront of cutting-edge AI practices and developing publishable innovations
• Build Scalable AI Infrastructure: Develop and maintain a high-performance, user-centric ML platform enabling scalable and flexible AI adoption across the organization
• Ensure Responsible, Ethical AI: Develop and maintain robust safety and quality controls for AI use in a metal health domain, inclusive of both fully automated and human-in-the-loop mechanisms
• Lead Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with clinicians, statisticians, and other experts to measure and enhance the impact of AI-driven solutions for mental healthcare
• Ensure Operational Excellence: Optimize training data pipelines and feedback loops, ensuring our AI systems are scalable, secure, and robust, adhering to software development best practices
• Promote Data-Driven Culture: Foster experimentation and measurement, empowering teams to integrate closely monitored AI/ML capabilities effectively and with confidence
• Collaborate on Integration: Work closely with other tech teams to align AI infrastructure and operations with broader company systems and infrastructure

Preferred Qualifications

• Preferred Domain Expertise: Experience working in consumer-facing health tech, mental health, or clinical settings, with a strong understanding of the challenges and opportunities in applying empathetic and responsible AI in healthcare, is highly desirable
• Advanced AI Knowledge: Expertise in implementing multiple AI approaches at scale, including LLMs (productionizing LLM-driven solutions), recommendation systems, reinforcement learning, or advanced optimization techniques
• Platform Development: Demonstrated ability to design, build, and scale machine learning platforms, architect robust data pipelines, and manage infrastructure and operations to support AI/ML production environments efficiently
• Scalability & Performance: Experience designing evaluation systems, tests, and feedback loops to ensure AI/ML systems meet scalability, reliability, and performance standards while adhering to modern software development and engineering best practices
• Business Strategy Alignment: Ability to translate complex AI/ML capabilities into actionable solutions that align with and drive strategic business objectives, ensuring high impact and measurable outcomes
• Collaboration & Influence: Proven success in collaborating with cross-functional teams, including engineering, product, design, and non-technical stakeholders, to develop and deliver practical, real-world AI solutions
• Team Building & Mentorship: Strong leadership and management experience, with a focus on recruiting, mentoring, and developing diverse, high-performing technical AI teams in fast-paced environments

Benefits

• Base salary, stock awards, comprehensive healthcare coverage, monthly wellness stipend, retirement savings match, lifetime Headspace membership, unlimited, free mental health coaching, generous parental leave
• Paid performance incentives are also included for those in eligible roles