Director of AI Research & Development

Job Description :

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do but also about each other.

We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live.

Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Job Summary :

Cat Digital is seeking an experienced, data science leader to head research and development of Generative AI technologies, and the prototyping of capabilities to be leveraged across our Digital ecosystem.

For the Director of AI Research & Development, we are seeking an individual with deep knowledge, academic pedigree, and a proven experience in delivering / leveraging ML, AI, NLP, & LLMs.

In this role, you will be instrumental to setting the technical direction, driving innovation, and rapidly proving value with Generative AI for the entire Cat Digital portfolio.

What You Will Do :

• Participate in enterprise AI working groups, councils and other AI governing bodies
• Influence strategic decisions around Cat Digital’s AI offerings
• Work with Digital product teams to determine the highest impact use cases for AI / GenAI and then execute prototypes as structured designs of experiments
• Lead the research, development, and application of AI / GenAI technologies for Cat Digital
• Work with leaders across the tech industry, some of the most progressive AI thought leaders in academia, and emerging players in the industry
• Accountable for hiring, managing, and mentoring a team or multiple teams of data scientist, data analysts and prompt engineers in delivering the common department goals.
• Responsible for all personnel issues and performance evaluation of subordinates, as well as overall employee satisfaction for the division.
• Follow general policies and guidelines for projects under his / her control to ensure specific, management goals are met, and desired results are achieved.

Impacts key quality goals including customer satisfaction, continuous improvement, and reoccurring revenue, timeliness, accuracy, efficiency, cost savings, process quality, etc.

What You Will Have :

• Collaboration & Leadership in Analytics : Extensive experience working among and leading experts in data science; providing visionary leadership, and structured discipline to execution.
• Machine Learning, AI & GenAI : Proficiency with deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow. Proficiency with Python and basic libraries for machine learning.

Ability to visualize & synthesize results. Full stack experience building GenAI solutions; data prep & vectorization, embedding / chunking, prompting, search / summary / RAG / finetuning.

Analytic Platforms & Framework : Extensive knowledge utilizing cloud native data science platforms, components and frameworks;

AWS, Azure, Snowflake, preferred.

• Research : Expert knowledge of formulating, executing and monitoring industry research. Staying aware of emerging trends and ensuring the team’s work remains relevant and leading edge.
• Business Comprehension : In-depth understanding of business scenarios, developing hypotheses, applying analytic approaches, and objectively measuring performance & value.

Considerations for Top Candidates :

• PhD or Master’s degree desired, preferably in Computer Science, Engineering, Machine Learning, Statistics, Economics, Physics, or a similar field with quantitative coursework, or equivalent work experience.
• Ideally, 10+ years of experience in Machine Learning, delivering complex prototyping solutions to production.
• Extensive proven, hands-on experience in data science. Expert-level experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Natural Language Generation (NLG).
• Extensive experience with advanced data analysis and statistical methods such as regression, hypothesis testing, ANOVA, statistical process control, etc.
• Practical applications of machine learning techniques such as Clustering, Logistic Regression, CART, Random Forests, SVM or Neural Networks.
• Expert-level knowledge of deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and other open sources libraries / APIs or similar.

Strong technical and problem-solving skills and evidence of continuous learning in the analytics field

• Breadth and depth of knowledge in the application of statistical and / or digital methods to solve business problems
• Competency in coaching and mentoring junior Data Scientists in the creation, validation, and application of prototypes as well as in implementing digital solutions
• Demonstrated proficiency applying Python (NumPy, SciPy, pandas, etc) programming to solve business challenges
• Experience with SQL, Data Visualization tools, Snowflake / AWS / Tableau visualization is a plus
• Experience with cloud technologies (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc)
• Strong initiative to research and apply new methods and digital technologies to exceed customer expectations.
• Good communication, interpersonal, and collaboration skills across multiple teams
• Published contributions to the AI Research community is highly desired.
• Experience in industrial / manufacturing industry is helpful but not required.

What You Will Get :

Working with a Fortune 100 leader, you can build your career on a global scale and take advantage of development opportunities with emerging technologies.

We’ve created an inclusive environment for you to explore your passions, make an impact and do the work that really matters. Join Us.