Director Data Engineering & AI Enablement in United State

MARICOPA COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT (MCCCD)

Career Opportunity: Director Data Engineering & AI Enablement

Why you want to be here...

10 Colleges. Unlimited Opportunities.

The Maricopa County Community College District is one of the largest community college systems in the nation. Home to 10 individually accredited community colleges and 31 satellite locations, we proudly serve students in every corner of the Valley. Each day, our dedicated faculty, staff, and administrators, live out our vision—creating excellence in education for a better world.

Benefits…You Bet!

Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) is committed to providing a competitive and comprehensive benefits program that supports our employees' and their families' health and well-being. Therefore, the MCCCD benefits support every stage of life and are designed to meet the diverse needs of our community. Explore the wide range of benefits and perks available to eligible employees at MCCCD:

Affordable and Comprehensive Benefits Package:

● Nationwide Medical, Dental, and Vision Coverage

● Paid Time Off: Vacation, Sick Leave, and Personal Time

● 20 Paid Observed Holidays

● Company-paid Life Insurance, AD&D, and Short-Term Disability plans, with the option to purchase supplemental coverage

● Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) Pension, including Long Term Disability and Retiree Health Insurance with 100% employer-matching contributions

● Optional Retirement Plans: 403(b), 457(b), Roth 403(b), Roth 457(b)

● Tuition Reimbursement for employees and dependents

● Annual Professional Development Funding

● Flexible Work Schedules

What cool stuff does this job do?

Information Technology Services (ITS) at the MCCCD seeks a dynamic Director of Data Engineering & AI Enablement. Reporting to the CIO, you'll craft the strategy and practical architecture for modern data platforms, drive AI adoption, and forge a data-driven culture that delivers real-world impact in student services, institutional effectiveness, and district operations.

This new position is a transformative opportunity to become a key part of our expanding organization: you will build a team from the ground up, evaluate and integrate AI tools and services, and shepherd AI/ML use cases from ideation to production—while establishing ethical and governance guardrails. At the same time, you will lead the modernization of MCCCD’s data engineering and business intelligence ecosystems, including dashboarding, data warehousing, data lakes, and robust enterprise database infrastructure. You’ll define long-term roadmaps, budget and resource plans, and partner with leadership across colleges to align technical strategy with educational mission. If you are energized by leading innovation, shaping outcomes at scale, and coaching high-performing teams, this role offers an unmatched chance to build the future of AI and data at MCCCD.

The ideal candidate for Director is someone who possesses tactical and influential skills, with deep technical expertise working with python and data transformations, structured and unstructured data, and building a team. If you’re looking to advance to the next stage in your Data/AI career, apply to this role today.

Relocation assistance will be considered for the selected candidate.

Where will my time be spent?

People / Team / Project Leadership (30 %)

• Plan, organize, assign, supervise, review, and evaluate work of staff.
• Identify training needs and promote professional growth.
• Build, lead, and develop a team of data and AI professionals—fostering collaboration, innovation, and agility.
• Hold team members accountable for execution and deliverables.
• Lead recruiting, onboarding, and retention strategies for AI/data engineering talent.

Data Strategy & Platform Architecture (30 %)

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data infrastructure for analytics, operational systems, and AI applications.
• Define district-wide data strategy in collaboration with institutional research and academic leadership.
• Ensure alignment with data governance, security, and privacy best practices.
• Evaluate architectures (lakehouse, data mesh, hybrid cloud) and select frameworks suited for AI at scale.
• Oversee integration with student information systems (SIS), LMS platforms, and other education ecosystems.
• Direct the design and maintenance of enterprise data warehouses, data lakes, and semantic layers for BI use cases.

AI Enablement & Innovation (25 %)

• Identify and drive AI/ML use cases district-wide, including prototypes, POCs, production models.
• Promote ethical AI practices: bias mitigation, interpretability, monitoring, and transparency.
• Manage end-to-end MLOps—including feature stores, model registry, CI/CD, and observability metrics.
• Evaluate and deploy GenAI tools, pretrained models, and third-party services to accelerate value.

Cross-College Data Collaboration (10 %)

• Serve as liaison between district ITS, college IR/data teams to align goals and tools.
• Establish shared data definitions, pipelines, and interoperability district-wide.
• Create communities of practice to build data literacy and AI readiness across staff and faculty.

Administrative (5 %)

• Manage a budget of tools and resources within policy.
• Participate in and may lead shared governance efforts.
• Lead District-wide Data Governance efforts.
• Define budget strategies and ROI metrics for AI investments and vendor engagements.
• Performs related duties as assigned

So, to be considered I need to have...

Bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited institution in any field and six (6) years of professional experience in area related to the intended assignment, which includes two (2) years of supervisory or management experience.

OR

An equivalent combination of the conferred degree, education, certification and directly related full-time work experience as described above sufficient to successfully perform the essential duties of the job such as those listed above, unless otherwise subject to any other requirements set forth in law or regulation, may be considered.

You'd like me to also have...

Technical & AI-Leadership Expertise

• Demonstrated experience selecting and implementing automated data ingestion pipelines—e.g. leveraging tools like Apache Airflow, dbt, Kafka, Spark, Azure Data Factory.
• Proven success leading predictive analytics or AI strategies at an organizational scale—turning data into actionable insights across divisions or campuses.
• Expertise building data platforms in cloud environments—AWS, Azure, and/or GCP—leveraging data lakes, lakehouses, and modern warehousing patterns.

Data Engineering, BI, and Database Architecture

• Hands-on expertise with data pipeline development using SQL, Python, Spark, dbt, or cloud-native tools.
• Experience designing and maintaining enterprise data warehouses and data lakes for real-time and batch workloads.
• Knowledge of BI and dashboarding platforms (e.g., Power BI, Tableau, Looker), with experience creating centralized, self-service analytics environments.

Coding, ML & Pipeline Orchestration

• Proficiency with AI/ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn; and experience with production MLOps best practices (model registry, feature store, continuous deployment)

Governance, Ethics & Compliance

• Deep understanding of data governance, privacy, compliance, and security in public-sector or higher-ed contexts—particularly FERPA, HIPAA, and student data privacy.
• Familiarity with privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), such as differential privacy, anonymization, or federated learning.

Communications & Strategy

• Experience presenting technical strategy and ROI to executive leadership, board members, or shared governance bodies.
• Strong skills in bridging technical and non-technical stakeholders using data visualization/BI tools to create clarity and buy-in.

Education & Prior Experience

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field preferred.
• Experience leading large-scale data modernization or AI adoption initiatives in multi-campus organizations, including vendor selection and management.

What can I expect to be paid?

$110,561 - $143,729/annually, DOE

How do I give you my resume?

Apply online at jobs.maricopa.edu

Search for Job 321834 or Keyword “Director Data Engineering & AI Enablement”

Open until filled: 1st review of resumes will be the week of September 29, 2025

Legalease

MCCCD does not sponsor individuals for any type of work visas.

MCCCD will not discriminate, nor tolerate discrimination in employment or education, against any applicant, employee, or student because of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship status (including document abuse), age, disability, veteran status or genetic information.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

The policy of the MCCCD is to provide an educational, employment, and business environment free of gender discrimination. Incidents of misconduct should be reported to the college Title IX Coordinator, as outlined in policy, contact information is available at this link Title IX Coordinators.

The Clery Act is a Federal law requiring United States Colleges and Universities to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses. Crime reporting data for each of the Maricopa Community Colleges, as required under the Clery Act, is available at this link Clery Act.