Director, Data & Ai (Cary)

Job Title: Director, Data & AI – Engagement Strategy Location: Cary, NC (Hybrid) Compensation: ~$180K base + 22.5% bonus Overview A large, enterprise financial services organization is seeking a Director of Data & AI to lead analytics strategy supporting annual customer re engagement and growth initiatives within a Group Benefits business. This role sits inside a newly consolidated U.S. Data & Analytics function and partners directly with Sales, Marketing, and Technology leadership to drive measurable business outcomes. The Role You will lead a 20 person Business Engagement Platform and Data Science team responsible for delivering enterprise grade Business Intelligence, advanced analytics, and AI solutions across multiple product lines. The mandate spans data engineering, modeling, governance, dashboarding, and applied data science. You will modernize the data hub supporting re engagement strategy, unify employer and employee insight platforms, deploy propensity and lifetime value models, and introduce AI driven reporting and workflow automation solutions. This role also requires driving cultural transformation from a traditional technology centric model to a business outcome driven analytics organization. Key Responsibilities Own and execute the data and analytics roadmap aligned to sales and marketing strategy Lead development of unified BI and self service reporting platforms Design and deploy advanced analytics solutions including propensity, utilization, and lifetime value models Establish governance frameworks across data modeling, metadata, and quality Partner with executive stakeholders to translate business priorities into scalable data solutions Qualifications 10+ years progressive analytics and AI leadership experience 5+ years in insurance or financial services with sales/marketing analytics exposure Expertise in Python, SQL, BI tools (Tableau, Power BI), and modern ML methodologies Proven ability to lead large analytics teams and influence executive stakeholders This is a high visibility leadership role driving enterprise wide impact at scale.