Senior Manager, Engineering – AI & Innovation

Job Description: Job Title: Senior Manager, Engineering – AI & Innovation Location: Remote | USA, Canada Reports to: VP, Architecture (Engineering – Enterprise Architecture and AI & Innovation) Employment Type: Full-time This is new vacancy – Internal + External posting About the Role: You own AI & Innovation. You take direct, day-to-day leadership of the Innovation Crew and Launch Lab pods. Where the AI & Innovation Manager owns process and delivery mechanics and the Principal AI Engineer owns technical architecture, you own the people, the roadmap, and the outcomes. You are the true people leader in this function, the Manager and every engineer on the team look to you for direction, growth, and the final call on priority when demand exceeds capacity. In your first 30 days, you will have met with every team member, reviewed the active intake pipeline and PoC backlog, and confirmed the operating cadence. By day 60, you will have delivered your first quarterly roadmap review to the VP and identified the team's next hiring priority. By day 90, you will own the full reporting line for both pods and be the team's primary voice in cross-engineering leadership forums. This role is what lets AI & Innovation operate as a durable, standalone function rather than one leader's personal project. Hiring decisions, roadmap trade-offs, and escalations that once required a single point of judgment now have a dedicated owner, giving the team a stable center of gravity as it scales. The PoC…