Vice President, AI & Data Science

About MessagepointMessagepoint is a privately-owned software company providing an AI-powered SaaS solution that enables enterprises to manage and personalize customer communications with greater speed, accuracy, and control. Our award-winning platform empowers business users to create and optimize compliant, personalized communications across digital and print channels using advanced content intelligence and large language models.Messagepoint is headquartered in Toronto with employees located throughout Canada, the United States and the UK.About the RoleWe're hiring a Vice President, AI & Data Science to lead our award-winning MARCIE AI Platform and guide a diverse team of data scientists, AI/ML engineers, MLOps specialists, and platform developers. You will shape the future of generative AI for enterprise customer communications—work that directly impacts millions of communications daily across healthcare, financial services, insurance, and e-commerce. This role combines strategic vision, technical excellence, and research leadership, reporting to our Executive Vice President, R&D.MARCIE has earned three consecutive AI Excellence Awards (2023-2025) and is the industry's first generative AI solution for Customer Communications Management (CCM). You'll drive platform innovation, research partnerships with leading universities, and position Messagepoint as the technical leader in enterprise AI applications.What You'll DoDefine AI strategy and roadmap: Set multi-year vision for MARCIE platform evolution aligned with business objectives; guide technology stack decisions (OpenAI, Gemini, AWS Bedrock) and vendor partnerships worth $1M+ annuallyLead platform architecture: Oversee multi-cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps implementation ensuring production reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency across enterprise deploymentsDrive research excellence: Manage university partnerships and academic collaborations, secure R&D grants and tax credit programs, and guide patent development and publication programsBuild and mentor team: Lead cross-functional AI division spanning data scientists, AI/ML engineers, MLOps specialists, QA professionals, and platform developers; recruit top talent, establish career development frameworks, and foster collaborative, high-performance cultureEnsure production impact: Translate AI capabilities into measurable customer value (10x productivity gains, sub-second response times, improved translation accuracy); support go-to-market and customer success initiativesPosition industry leadership: Represent Messagepoint through conference speaking, technical publications, media engagement, and strategic thought leadership in enterprise AI spaceCollaborate with executives: Provide technical guidance to CEO and board on AI capabilities, competitive positioning, and emerging technology trendsWhat You Bring (Must-Haves)10+ years in AI/ML with proven track record deploying production LLM-powered systems to enterprise customers at scale5+ years leading teams: Demonstrated success building and scaling AI research/engineering organizations with direct reports, budget authority, and strategic planning responsibilityAdvanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science, AI/ML, Data Science, or related field with strong foundation in deep learning, NLP, and transformer architecturesHands-on technical contributor: Active coder and solution architect who develops production generative AI applications, builds RAG pipelines, implements multi-agent orchestration systems, and writes code alongside your team; this is not a purely managerial roleMulti-cloud expertise: Deep understanding of AWS, GCP, or Azure infrastructure; experience with MLOps, vector databases, RAG pipelines, and API-first designExecutive communication: Proven ability to influence C-suite and board-level strategy through clear, compelling technical storytellingResearch or academic collaboration: Experience managing university partnerships, grant programs, publications, or patent developmentWork authorization: Eligible to work in Canada; remote-first role requires strong asynchronous communication and self-directionNice to Have Publications in top AI conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, ACL, EMNLP) or journalsExperience with government R&D grant programs and tax creditsDomain expertise in Customer Communications Management (CCM), document processing, or regulated industries (healthcare, financial services, insurance)Conference speaking experience and established presence in AI research or practitioner communitiesTrack record of 10x+ productivity improvements through AI implementationsHow We WorkRemote-first: Work primarily from anywhere in Canada with flexible hours, while maintaining occasional in-office presence for collaboration, team building, and strategic planningCollaboration tools: Slack, Zoom, GitHub, Linear, Confluence; weekly team standups and bi-weekly executive reviewsAI-first culture: Heavy use of AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Augment, GitHub Copilot) for maximum team productivityResearch + production balance: Combine academic rigor with pragmatic engineering; publish and patent while shipping reliable enterprise systemsTravel: 4-6 times per year for conferences, customer meetings, or team offsitesOur Tech StackLLM Providers: OpenAI (GPT-4o), Google Gemini (2.5 Flash), AWS Bedrock (Claude, Titan) Agent Frameworks: LangGraph, OpenAI Assistants, LangChain Cloud: AWS (Bedrock, Lambda, ECS, SageMaker), GCP, Azure Vector DBs: pgvector, Pinecone, Milvus, Weaviate Observability: LangSmith, TruLens, DeepEval, CloudWatch, OpenTelemetry AI Safety: Guardrails, PII detection (AWS Comprehend, Presidio), content filtering Development: Claude Code, Augment, GitHub Copilot, Jupyter, MLflow, PyTorch, Hugging FaceTo Apply: Submit your resume and a brief cover letter describing your leadership philosophy and vision for enterprise AI. Include links to publications, patents, or notable projects that demonstrateyour expertise.Messagepoint is an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages diversity and inclusion in the workplace.We thank you for your interest, however, only those who qualify for an interview will be contacted.