Manager, Enterprise Generative Artificial Intelligence

Chicago, IL, United States

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is one of the largest school districts in the United States, serving over 330,000 students in 600+ schools and employing nearly 36,000 people, most of them teachers. CPS has set ambitious goals to ensure that every student, in every school and every neighborhood, has access to a world-class learning experience that prepares each for success in college, career, and civic life. In order to fulfill this mission, we make three commitments to our students, their families, and all Chicagoans: academic progress, financial stability, and integrity. Six core values are embedded within these commitments - student-centered, whole child, equity, academic excellence, community partnership, and continuous learning.

The Office of Information and Technology Services (ITS) works to build the capacity of schools to use information and technology, digital transformation, maintain network infrastructure, security standards, and support other departments to meet district goals. ITS provides innovative technology solutions that improve the quality of education for students, reduce the administrative burden on educators, facilitate parent interaction, increase community engagement, and support CPS' mission of transparency by focusing on the ease and equity of access to information.

Job Summary:

Reporting to the Executive Director of IT Business Partnership & Innovation, the Manager of Enterprise Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) will lead, develop, and execute the enterprise Generative AI approach for the CPS Information and Technology Services (ITS) Department. This position will proactively and holistically help guide the District through GenAI solutions, transformation, and innovation initiatives by assisting with planning, designing, innovating, orchestrating, and operationalizing the digital enterprise. The Manager of Enterprise GenAI's focus will include helping CPS simplify, standardize, and automate business processes, improve student engagement, improve digital curriculum, optimize costs, and mitigate risks, as well as helping business leaders understand, monetize, and operationalize existing, new, and emerging GenAI technologies. This role will lead a team of GenAI, Machine Learning, Large Language Models, ERP Embedded AI, EdTech AI, Central Office AI, and Business Process Automation consultants.

The Manager of Enterprise Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) will be held accountable for the following responsibilities:

Lead the development of an implementation plan for the modern GenAI solutions based on enterprise business strategy, requirements, and the varying AI strategies for project- or product-driven delivery teams.

Develop a 5-year enterprise artificial intelligence roadmap and lead the analysis of the business's future-state capabilities as well as both the current and future IT environment to detect critical deficiencies and recommend solutions for improvement to drive the business forward.

Oversee major deliverables tied to GenAI Competencies (including but not limited to Enterprise Business, Digital Curriculum, Enterprise Data Science, Enterprise Analytics, Enterprise Security, Enterprise Data/Information, Enterprise Infrastructure, Enterprise Platforms, Enterprise Integration, Enterprise Portfolio Architecture, and the CPS Architecture Review Board).

Develop and apply standards and minimal viable architectures through the GenAI governance model, informed by the business strategy and corporate governance.

Recruit, onboard, and provide direction, guidance, and strong leadership to the IT Business Partnership & Innovation team responsible for GenAI to ensure robust learning,career development, and performance management consistent with the CPS values and mission; foster collaboration and effective integration of efforts with division-wide initiatives.

Plan and manage a talent pool of domain GenAI architects that work with Enterprise Artificial Intelligence and non-AI/ML-related disciplines to deliver the organization's goals, objectives, and outcomes.

Lead and facilitate interaction with business leaders, product managers, and product owners in a business-driven conversation over the risks and implications of the product decision to the line of business, business unit, and greater enterprise.

Develop in detail the transformer architecture that powers LLMs, how employees are trained, and how fine-tuning enables LLMs to be adapted to a variety of specific use cases.

Demonstrate empirical scaling laws to optimize the model's objective function across dataset size, compute budget, and inference requirements.

Apply state-of-the-art training, tuning, inference, tools, and deployment methods to maximize the performance of models within the specific constraints of a GenAI project.

Identify the challenges and opportunities that generative AI creates for school-based businesses after hearing stories from industry researchers and practitioners.

Formulate, translate, advocate, support, and execute GenAI business strategy to achieve the organization's targeted business outcomes.

Clarify accountability and provide the focal point for agile, effective, and efficient decision-making.

Lead the analysis of business and operating models, market trends in the technology industry to determine their potential impact on the enterprise's business strategy, direction, and architecture.

Construct a GenAI technology-enabled business and operating model and provide viable options and visibility into execution issues.

Present gap analyses and/or GenAI investment roadmaps that reflect the status of the existing GenAI estate, namely, its ability to contribute to future-state business capabilities around ecosystems and digital platforms.

Identify critical skills, competencies, and career paths for GenAI team members and recommend training to help them develop and progress in their careers.

Ensure the role of GenAI in the project and product governance setting is one of guidance, advice, and oversight.

Effectively guide external Service Integrators/Providers and internal GenAI architects in implementing the strategy, providing guidance and reviewing GenAI plans and designs to ensure methodology, best practices, and standards as well as the overall quality of the solution, vision, and conceptual design.

Provide final approval of technology standards, guidelines, and frameworks; oversee and/or support the governance of GenAI principles and framework(s) to assure compliance with the enterprise GenAI strategy.

Ensure that any exceptions are well justified and documented through a formal waiver process analysis of the impact of GenAI technology exceptions and their effect on future IT and enterprise goals.

Track and apply existing, new, and emerging innovative GenAI technologies anchored in the business and operating model to assess their potential and use agile, DevOps, and lean approaches to evolve and manage innovation.

Run technology experiments to create new platforms and services and integrate the best of these into steady-state operations for the organization.

Develop a portfolio of services designed to meet business and stakeholder needs and deliver in an agile and time-boxed way.

Other duties and workstreams as assigned.

In order to be successful and achieve the above responsibilities, the Manager of Enterprise Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) must possess the following qualifications:

Education Required: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related field from an accredited college or university.

Relevant certifications such as GSDC Certified Generative AI Professional, IBM Applied AI Professional Certificate, Artificial Intelligence Engineer (AIE) Certification Process by the Artificial Intelligence Board of America (ARTiBA), Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), preferred.

Experience Required: Minimum of seven (7) years of relevant professional experience in progressively responsible GenAI, Machine Learning, and Large language models (LLM) roles, including the following, is required:

Minimum of three (3) years of experience in a supervisory/management position responsible for leading teams of direct reports in the GenAI or technology field.

Experience performing definition and implementation of GenAI solutions using leading software and hardware platforms;

Experience with backend integration to legacy applications and to SaaS.

Experience with vendor facilitation, management, and partnering.

Experience with GenAI and LLM Architectures, Data & Analytics management tools and techniques.

Experience in GenAI application systems and data design and deployment methodologies and techniques, or other architectural competencies, including security and infrastructure design and deployment.

Integration experience in areas such as information, solution or technical architecture, application development, middleware, information analysis, database management, or operations in a hybrid environment (i.e. Cloud, on-prem), preferred.

Ten (10) years of the experience above, including three (3) or more years in people management positions leading teams, preferred.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills, including listening, consultative, and negotiation skills, and the ability to facilitate or lead presentations articulating new ideas and concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.

Expert in Large language model (LLM), which is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) program that can recognize and generate text, among other tasks. LLMs are built on machine learning; specifically, a type of neural network called a transformer model.

Deep understanding of generative AI, with the ability to describe the key steps in a typical Large language model (LLM)-based generative AI lifecycle, from data gathering and model selection, to performance evaluation and deployment.

High levels of technical skill and GenAI expertise, integrity, honesty, humility, credibility, and the courage to make difficult yet necessary decisions.

Ability to lead and influence internal and external stakeholders across multiple levels of the organization

Strong leadership and leadership development skills; ability to coach highly skilled managers and GenAI professionals toward excellence and build the capacity of LLM technical teams

Ability to articulate a vision, set high standards, and effectively guide teams and stakeholders in the realization of expectations set.

Effective strategic planning capabilities, including the ability to establish long-term vision and goals, and align/manage activities toward goal fulfillment; capable of thinking strategically and acting pragmatically.

Ability to build collaborative relationships with a variety of constituent groups, including external partners, to ensure the entire system operates in the most effective manner possible to support organizational success.

Knowledge of operations, budget/finance, management, and organizational development; capable of estimating, cost / benefit analysis, ROI, needs analysis, project scheduling, evaluation techniques, and understanding procurement, legal, vendor service, and RFP processes, etc.

Expert-level knowledge of project management, including budget and resource management; ability to manage large-scale strategic GenAI initiatives.

In-depth, up-to-date knowledge/understanding of the following:

Business ecosystems, SaaS, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), ERP (i.e. SAP, Oracle), platform as a service (PaaS), APIs, Open data, Microservices, DevSecOps, Event-driven IT, Predictive analytics and AI/ML (Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning), etc.

GenAI Technology, trends, and techniques in the K-12 education industry.

All components of holistic enterprise GenAI, as well as digital curriculum theories, practices, implementations, and EdTech solutions.

Strategic planning techniques and principles.

Proficient in GenAI methodologies, standards, practices, governance, reference patterns

Ability to define problems, analyze data, and outline valid conclusions and action steps

Familiarity with GenAI information management practices, system development life cycle management, IT services management, agile and lean methodologies, infrastructure and operations, and EA and ITIL frameworks.

Capable of following Company policies and practices while representing CPS ethically and professionally in all interactions with employees, governmental agencies, vendors, contractors, suppliers, students, and the Chicago community

Conditions of Employment

As a condition of employment with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), employees are required to: Establish/Maintain Chicago Residency - Employees are required to live within the geographic boundaries of the City of Chicago within six months of their CPS hire date and maintain residency throughout their employment with the district. The Chicago residency requirement does not apply to temporary/part-time positions, however, all CPS employees must be residents of Illinois.

Be Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19 - Unless approved for a medical or religious exemption, all employees are required to be up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccinations, including boosters, and to submit proof of vaccination to the district within 30 days of hire. "Up-to-date" on vaccination is defined as being at least two weeks past all primary vaccine doses and any applicable boosters.