Director- Applied AI

Covista is America's largest healthcare educator, serving more than 97,000 students and supported by a community of 385,000 alumni across five accredited institutions. Through personalized, tech-enabled education powered by 10,000 faculty and colleagues, Covista expands access to healthcare careers and addresses the U.S. healthcare workforce shortage at scale. Covista is the parent company of American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Chamberlain University, Ross University School of Medicine, Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine and Walden University. Our colleagues come from a wide range of backgrounds, business, academia, healthcare, government and nonprofits, and are part of a culture where doing exceptional work and making a meaningful difference for students and society aren't separate goals—they're one and the same. This means creating an environment where colleagues can develop new skills, build careers that match their ambitions and see the tangible impact of their work on healthcare education and workforce development. Colleagues who deliver results and embrace new tools to work smarter are valued for their contributions. But what makes working at Covista distinctive is our impact. Our faculty and colleagues don't just support healthcare education—they shape it. This isn't abstract purpose work. It's solving real problems for real people in real communities while advancing careers. We operate on a hybrid schedule with four in-office days per week (Monday–Thursday). This approach enhances creativity, innovation, communication, and relationship-building, fostering a dynamic and collaborative work environment. For more information, visit covista.com and follow us on LinkedIn , Instagram and YouTube . The Director, Applied AI leads Covista's Applied AI team within Enterprise Data & Insights (EDI) — the single team that designs, builds, and operates Covista's agentic AI capability across all four school brands. This role owns three delivery PODs: No/Low/Medium-Code Agents, High-Code/Full-Code Agents, and Robotic Process Automation.   As the accountable owner of Applied AI's portfolio, Responsible-AI posture, and partner ecosystem, you will build out a fully staffed FTE core (Principal AI/Agent Architect, Responsible AI/Risk & Safety Lead, AI Evaluation Engineer), govern platform architecture and vendor delivery, and ensure every agent shipped is safe, evaluated, and measurably valuable to the business.  Strategic Leadership & Portfolio Ownership  Own and evolve the Applied AI strategy across all three delivery PODs, ensuring alignment with EDI's broader data & AI roadmap and Covista's enterprise architecture principles.  Serve as the single accountable leader for the full spectrum of automation and agentic AI work — from deterministic RPA bots to full agentic systems.  Represent Applied AI in EDI leadership forums, partnering closely with the Sr Directors of Data Science, Data Engineering, and Data Reporting & Analytics.  Platform Architecture & Technology Oversight  Partner with the Principal AI/Agent Architect to set and enforce the reference architecture: Vertex AI Agent Engine patterns, the Agent Development Kit (ADK), the MCP tool catalog, and model-routing rules across Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft models.  Ensure every new agent design is reviewed against reference architecture before entering the backlog, across all three PODs.  Drive standardization and modernization of the platform, emphasizing scalability, reusability, and reduced technical debt.  Responsible AI & Governance  Own overall accountability for Responsible-AI posture, with the Responsible AI/Risk & Safety Lead operating a dotted line into the Covista AI Governance Board.  Ensure risk tiering; FERPA/HIPAA/GLBA review gates, red-team coordination, model cards, and bias evaluation are applied consistently to every agent and automation before release.  Require eval-case authorship as a contractual deliverable on every Applied AI build statement of work — no eval, no production.  Delivery, Partner & Vendor Management  Manage delivery partner relationships (AheadRace, SoftServe, Stefanini) including SOW governance, two-vendor resilience planning for critical roles, and quarterly partner scorecards.  Route every partner engagement above $250K/year to the Covista Enterprise Architecture Review Board prior to contract signature.  Own intake and prioritization across the Applied AI backlog, ensuring efficient allocation of FTE and contract capacity.  Evaluation & Quality Oversight  Hold the AI Evaluation Engineer accountable for a durable eval harness — offline golden datasets, regression suites, LLM-as-judge scoring, human-review queues, and online quality monitoring.  Treat evaluation data as protected Covista IP that stays inside the organization, never delegated wholesale to a delivery partner.  People Leadership & Team Building Lead and mentor the current Applied AI core team (Technical Lead, Product Owner, Scrum Master, AI Engineer) plus the RPA POD (RPA Architect & Product Owner and RPA developers).  Execute the FY27 conservative-MVP hiring plan: Principal AI/Agent Architect, Responsible AI/Risk & Safety Lead, and AI Evaluation Engineer, and prepare the FY28 roadmap hires pending demonstrated value.  Cultivate a high-performing, inclusive culture with a focus on continuous improvement, technical excellence, and safe experimentation.  Cross-Functional Collaboration  Maintain a clear routing boundary with CVSA AI Solutions (full-code AI products) and the chatbot/aggregation team, ensuring work reaches the right team the first time.  Partner with business sponsors across Covista's school brands to translate demand into a prioritized, governed agent backlog.  Performs other duties as assigned. Complies with all policies and standards. Bachelor's Degree Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, or related field. Required