Senior Manager AI and Innovation - Westminster, CO, United States

Description · This position is a strategic and hands‑on leader responsible for advancing the organization's use of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and emerging technologies. This role accelerates business value through responsible AI adoption, governance, improved decis ...

Job description

Description

This position is a strategic and hands‑on leader responsible for advancing the organization's use of artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and emerging technologies. This role accelerates business value through responsible AI adoption, governance, improved decision intelligence, and pragmatic innovation aligned with enterprise strategy. This role leads Tri‑State's AI program — including strategy, governance, solution delivery, and enterprise adoption — ensuring capabilities support operations, energy markets, member services, and corporate functions. 

This role reports to the Chief Information & Technology Officer (CITO) and collaborates across the enterprise to ensure AI and innovation initiatives are ethical, secure, and generate measurable business impact.

Responsibilities

o    AI Strategy & Innovation Leadership

•    Develop and maintain AI & Innovation strategy and roadmap aligned with corporate strategy, operational priorities, and the AI Governance Program.

•    Accelerate innovation by building and maintaining a vision for how AI will drive value aligned with strategic objectives through collaboration with Tri-State business units.

•    Work with business units to identify, evaluate, and prioritize high value AI use cases.

•    Champion emerging technologies such as GenAI, decision intelligence, autonomous agents, advanced analytics, intelligent automation, workforce augmentation technologies where they produce business value.

•    Maintain awareness of regulatory, utility sector, and North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)/Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) appropriate obligations for AI usage.
 

o    AI Governance and Risk Management

•    Chair the AI Council. Develop and maintain responsible AI policies and governance programs to address AI's unique regulatory and compliance requirements while ensuring appropriate audit and risk controls. 

•    Establish effective collaboration between security, risk, compliance, legal, human resources, safety, and other stakeholders to rapidly adapt practices as necessary.
 

o    Solution Delivery & Technical Leadership

•    Manage the AI portfolio and AI initiatives, overseeing the allocation of resources for both current AI portfolios and long-term AI capabilities and establish evaluation and management practices to estimate, measure, and foster accountability for business value and return on investment of AI initiatives.

•    Define and update the operating model and delivery capabilities to engineer and operationalize AI initiatives, overseeing the development and execution of advanced AI products and solutions, ensuring their scalable and seamless integration across the organization.

•    Lead the strategy and recommendations for build, buy, and blend decisions. Steward AI architectures and the selection of AI platforms and technologies. 

•    Ensure AI solutions integrate properly with core platforms and operational systems and technologies.

o    Enterprise Change, Culture & Adoption

•    Drive AI readiness and literacy across the organization, including partnering with Learning and Design for training, assisting with communication plans, and leading change management strategies.

•    Foster cross-functional coordination to align AI initiatives across business units ensuring maximum value realization, minimizing conflicting implementations, and effectively communicating complex AI topics to various stakeholders.
 

o    Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement & Vendor Management

•    Understands and embraces the tenants of the annual Business Plan, and ensures adherence to enterprise vision, mission, values, strategies, goals, objectives and priorities.  

•    Lead and mentor a small, multidisciplinary team (data scientists, software engineers, etc.).

•    Manage external vendors, consulting partners, and technology providers, ensuring value alignment and responsible scaling.

•    Build strong relationships with business unit leaders to drive collaborative innovation and solution co design. 

•    Effectively leads through change and adversity and demonstrates the ability to successfully resolve issues as they arise.  
 

o    Managerial Responsibilities:

•    Ensure that training and development needs for each employee have been identified and that adequate learning opportunities are provided. 

•    Ensure that team and individual employee execution is evaluated against established goals and objectives for all accountabilities.  

•    Recommend annual budgets to meet goals and objectives aligned to support enterprise strategies, goals, and objectives. 

•    Actively monitors performance against budget, identifies variances, and provides forecasts.

•    Maintain compliance with all company policies and procedures and attain knowledge and remain knowledgeable of regulations, laws, standards, and best practices applicable to functional area.

•    Because Tri-State has an obligation to provide continuous, reliable electric service to its customers, the ability to work overtime at any time of the day or week is considered an essential function of the job.

OTHER DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES

•    Perform other related duties as assigned.

Tri-State recognizes the value of a highly-engaged and committed workforce and provides an excellent benefits program that includes: Medical Insurance, Dental Insurance, Vision Insurance, Health Savings Account (HSA), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), Tuition Reimbursement, Flexible Work Schedules including compressed work week and telecommuting opportunities to work remotely up to 40%, Life Insurance, 401K, Long Term Disability (LTD), Short Term Disability (STD), Employee Assistant Program (EAP) and Paid Leave Benefits.

Senior Manager AI and Innovation

Hiring Salary Range: $145,000-$224,000

Actual compensation offer to candidate may vary outside of the posted hiring salary range based upon work experience, education, and/or skill level.

Qualifications

Education and Training: 

• Bachelor's degree in business administration, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); computer science; artificial intelligence; data science; information systems or related field; or equivalent work experience.

Knowledge, Skills, and Ability:

• Understand generation, transmission, and corporate business concepts and practices deeply enough to engage in problem-solving sessions and discuss business issues in stakeholder language. Ability to align AI initiatives with the organization's overarching vision, strategic goals, current market circumstances, and competitor activities. Includes understanding how AI will impact business objectives beyond financial metrics.
• Understand how decision intelligence, agentic AI, and other AI practices, approaches, and application areas can transform decision making and work practices.
• Ability to leverage a comprehensive understanding of industry dynamics and the organization's core mission to pinpoint where AI can yield the most significant impact and competitive advantage, while also identifying relevant business risks and opportunities.
• Familiar with regulatory requirements and relevant data protection laws and regulations, such as the Colorado AI Act, NERC CIP standards, and industry-specific standards.
• Proven record of applying and orchestrating AI throughout an organization, leading complex, multidisciplinary teams in new endeavors and delivering solutions. Ability to balance team and individual responsibilities, build teams and consensus, get things done through others not directly under their supervision.
• Strong facilitation skills and a clear ability to build strong relationships with business stakeholders at all levels, including executive leadership.
• Ability to quickly grasp how new technologies work and how they might be applied to achieve business goals.
• Strong, proven problem-solving skills and the ability to identify, analyze, and resolve problems, driving solutions through to completion.

Other:

• Willingness to travel as required for training and meetings throughout service territory. (Must possess a valid driver's license.)

PREFERRED JOB QUALIFICATIONS

• Master's degree in business administration, science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.