Director, AI Practice - Development, Growth, & Strategic Partnerships

LTS is seeking an accomplished, entrepreneurial AI growth leader to establish, commercialize, and scale our AI services practice. The Director, AI Practice - Development, Growth, and Strategic Partnerships  will personally drive the work required to build the practice—developing qualified pipeline, shaping, and winning strategic opportunities, creating market-ready offerings, and activating partnerships that expand LTS' capabilities, market reach, and revenue. This is not a traditional people-management role or a relationship-only business development position. We are looking for a hands-on practice builder who has grown an AI consulting, professional services, or technology business and is prepared to do the work directly: open doors, develop offerings, cultivate partners, shape solutions, write and lead pursuits, and move opportunities from initial conversation through award and transition to delivery. The ideal candidate combines commercial leadership with credible technical fluency. They can engage executives, mission and business leaders, product firms, cloud providers, architects, and delivery teams; frame customer challenges as practical AI opportunities; and lead those opportunities from market development through capture and transition to delivery. Working closely with the EVP, AI and LTS executive leadership, this individual will help define the company's AI growth agenda and build a differentiated practice serving federal, public sector, healthcare, and commercial markets. The role is designed for a senior individual contributor who leads through personal execution, relationships, judgment, and measurable results, not through layers of staff. What You'll Do: Own AI Practice Growth • Personally own and execute the growth strategy, pipeline, bookings, revenue, and market expansion goals for LTS' AI practice. • Identify, qualify, shape, and pursue strategic AI consulting, implementation, and technology-enabled services opportunities. • Actively use established customer, industry, and partner relationships to create access, schedule conversations, accelerate opportunity development, and generate qualified demand. • Build executive-level relationships with customer decision-makers, mission and business leaders, technology executives, and procurement stakeholders. • Maintain disciplined opportunity and pipeline management, including growth forecasts, pursuit priorities, investment decisions, and measurable performance reporting. Build and Commercialize the Practice • Personally develop and commercialize repeatable AI service offerings, accelerators, sales materials, and solution plays aligned with customer needs, market demand, and LTS' technical capabilities. • Define go-to-market strategies, target markets, buyer personas, value propositions, pricing approaches, and routes to market for the AI portfolio. • Translate emerging AI capabilities into clear, outcome-focused offerings that can be sold, delivered, scaled, and expanded across accounts. • Partner with the EVP, AI, architects, engineers, delivery leaders, and account executives to align the AI roadmap with market opportunities and client priorities. • Establish the operating cadence, growth metrics, and repeatable methods needed to mature the practice from early opportunities into a sustainable line of business. Lead Strategic Partnerships • Personally establish and deepen relationships with leading AI product firms, foundation-model providers, cloud platforms, data and software companies, and systems integrators. • Understand partner programs, alliance models, co-sell motions, channel structures, marketplace opportunities, certifications, and partnership tiers—and translate them into business advantage for LTS. • Develop joint solutions, go-to-market plans, demonstrations, and pursuit strategies with strategic technology partners. • Negotiate and activate partnerships that expand LTS' capabilities, improve competitive positioning, create qualified pipeline, and accelerate customer adoption. • Maintain senior relationships within relevant AI and product companies and serve as LTS' executive point of contact across the partner ecosystem. Drive Capture and Win Strategy • Lead opportunity qualification, customer shaping, capture planning, competitive positioning, teaming, and win-strategy development for priority AI pursuits. • Roll up your sleeves to own the business narrative and contribute directly to proposal strategy, solution framing, executive summaries, technical content, reviews, and oral presentations. • Bring together customer needs, LTS capabilities, partner technologies, pricing considerations, and delivery realities to shape differentiated and executable solutions. • Collaborate with growth, contracts, pricing, delivery, and technical subject-matter experts throughout the pursuit lifecycle and support a disciplined transition from award to delivery. • Represent LTS in executive briefings, demonstrations, conferences, industry forums, webinars, and thought-leadership opportunities. Provide Market and Solution Leadership • Serve as a technically credible growth leader with practical knowledge of generative AI, large language models (LLM), retrieval-augmented generation, agentic AI, machine learning, intelligent automation, advanced analytics, and enterprise AI platforms. • Serve as a trusted technical Advisor to LTS AI initiatives, helping project teams apply current industry standards, technologies, architectures and leading practices to deliver secure, responsible and effective AI solutions. • Help customers evaluate use cases, expected outcomes, implementation approaches, data readiness, governance, responsible AI, security, and adoption considerations. • Monitor AI market trends, partner roadmaps, competitor offerings, policy developments, and evolving customer priorities; convert insights into actionable growth plays. • Ensure proposed solutions are outcome-driven, technically credible,