VP, Head of Responsible AI

A global, data-driven organization is seeking a visionary VP, Head of Responsible AI to lead the design and execution of enterprise-wide AI trust, governance, and risk frameworks. Reporting jointly to senior technology and legal leadership, this role sits at the intersection of innovation, compliance, and security—ensuring AI adoption scales responsibly in a highly regulated, client-facing environment.

This leader will define how ethical, secure, and compliant AI is embedded across the enterprise, balancing speed-to-value with robust guardrails for risk, privacy, and fairness.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and operationalize a multi-year Responsible & Secure AI maturity roadmap aligned with regulatory requirements and client expectations.

• Co-lead an enterprise AI governance body to standardize AI approval, deployment, and oversight decisions.

• Act as an internal and external authority on AI trust, supporting executive leadership, clients, regulators, and industry forums.

• Establish and maintain a centralized system of record for AI assets, including model registries, lineage, and audit trails.

• Oversee AI risk testing practices, including red-teaming and resilience testing against emerging threats (e.g., prompt injection, model extraction, data poisoning).

• Embed “Secure by Design” principles into LLMOps and DevSecOps pipelines, including agentic AI systems.

• Ensure retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and fine-tuning workflows protect sensitive data and prevent cross-contamination.

• Implement discovery and governance mechanisms for unmanaged or “shadow” AI across business units.

• Drive compliance with global AI regulations and standards (e.g., EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, applicable U.S. state laws).

• Mandate bias detection, fairness testing, and human-in-the-loop controls for high-impact AI use cases.

• Support commercial and client discussions by providing transparency on AI data protection and governance practices.

• Partner with business leaders to responsibly enable AI-driven workflows without compromising risk controls.

• Evaluate and govern relationships with foundation model providers and open-source AI technologies.

• Oversee audits, dashboards, and continuous monitoring to ensure policy adherence.

• Lead enterprise training, awareness, and culture-building initiatives around responsible AI.

• Build and mentor a high-performing team of AI governance, ethics, and security professionals.

Qualifications

Required

• 15+ years of experience in senior technical, legal, risk, or governance leadership roles, with at least 5 years focused on AI/ML governance, security, or ethics.

• Hybrid expertise: ability to engage deeply with both technical teams (e.g., modern AI architectures, data platforms) and legal/compliance stakeholders (e.g., liability, regulatory risk).

• Strong working knowledge of global AI risk frameworks and standards (NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act).

• Proven experience building scalable AI governance programs in complex, regulated, client-facing environments.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Law, Ethics, or a related field with strong technical grounding.

Preferred

• Advanced degree (MS, PhD, JD) strongly preferred.

• Hands-on exposure to LLMOps, RAG security, AI red-teaming, or shadow AI mitigation.

• Experience leading cross-functional AI governance committees or enterprise maturity programs.

• Comfort operating in executive- and client-facing settings, providing assurance on AI trust and risk management.