Vice President, Data & AI

Michael Baker International (MBI) is an 85-year-old engineering and consulting firm transforming into a technology-enabled platform company. Within the Office of the CTO, we are building enterprise AI and digital-twin platforms — including Titan, our internally owned enterprise AI and agent platform, and LiveTwin, our digital-twin platform — on a modern cloud data foundation.

The Vice President, Data & AI is a new executive role reporting directly to the CTO, created to solve MBI's single biggest platform challenge: organizing, governing, and productizing the company's fragmented data so that AI agents can be deployed safely and at scale. This leader will establish the trusted-data foundation beneath our AI platforms first, then drive the expansion of agentic AI across the enterprise and our client-facing products.

This is a hands-on executive role (approximately 20–30% hands-on) for a builder who has led data and AI at scale, thinks platform-first, and treats trusted data as the prerequisite for reliable AI.

• Establish full data-state visibility — map, classify, and assess the current state of MBI's data across product, engineering, and back-office systems (Oracle, HCM, GIS/geospatial, project systems).
• Stand up a trusted-data foundation — design and build a governed data mart / data factory and a trusted-data layer as the reliable, production-safe backbone for AI agents on Titan and LiveTwin.
• Define and run the governance motion — implement data governance, quality controls, lineage, data classification/PII handling, and data contracts under a federated, domain-owned operating model.
• Enable agentic AI at scale — move the organization from AI interfaces built on fragmented data to production-grade AI and multi-agent workflows grounded in trusted, contextual data.
• Ensure continuity — keep existing tools and platforms working while the foundation is being built, sequencing change without disrupting delivery.

Data Strategy & Platform

• Own MBI's enterprise data strategy and architecture — cloud-native, ELT-based, and designed for AI readiness.
• Build and operate a governed data mart / data factory and trusted-data layer that unifies fragmented product and back-office data.
• Select and evolve the enterprise data & AI platform (e.g., Databricks / Fabric-class platforms), balancing cost, performance, and long-term ownership.
• Partner with the CIO and infrastructure teams on integration, security, and compliance (including FedRAMP for federal work and controlled data handling).

Data Governance & Quality

• Institute a “trusted data first” discipline: governance, quality controls, master data / survivorship, and traceable lineage as the gate to AI deployment.
• Operationalize an AI-readiness framework spanning clean, contextual, consumable, current, correlated, and compliant data.
• Define data contracts, classification standards, and PII masking; establish a federated governance model where domains own their data.

AI & Agentic AI

• Lead the data and ML foundation for MBI's AI platforms (Titan, LiveTwin), enabling reliable retrieval, knowledge graphs, and enterprise context.
• Design and scale agentic AI systems — multi-agent orchestration, tool/function calling, retrieval-augmented generation, and evaluation/guardrail frameworks for production safety.
• Establish MLOps/LLMOps practices: model and agent lifecycle management, monitoring, evaluation, and responsible-AI controls.
• Translate business problems in engineering, geospatial, and government-services domains into deployable AI and data products.

Leadership & Execution

• Build and lead a high-performing data engineering, governance, and AI/ML organization.
• Operate as a hands-on technical leader (~20–30% hands-on) who sets architecture direction and stays close to the build.
• Communicate strategy, progress, and risk clearly to the CTO, executive leadership, and the board / private-equity ownership.
• Deliver a 90-day plan covering data-state visibility, a governance motion, data classification handling, tool continuity, and data contracts.

Required

• 15+ years in data and AI, with senior leadership experience building enterprise data platforms and AI products at scale.
• Proven record standing up governed data platforms — data mart/factory, trusted-data layers, lineage, and MDM — as the foundation for analytics and AI.
• Deep, current expertise in AI and agentic AI: LLMs, RAG, multi-agent orchestration, and the data foundations required to run them safely in production.
• Hands-on command of modern cloud data stacks (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, or equivalent), ELT, and cloud-native geospatial where relevant.
• Experience defining and enforcing data governance, quality, classification, PII handling, and data contracts under a federated operating model.
• Track record delivering proprietary ML/AI platforms that create measurable business value (revenue, efficiency, or new products).
• Executive presence and the ability to influence senior stakeholders and ownership; comfort operating in a fast-moving, transformation environment.

Preferred

• Experience in engineering/AEC, geospatial/GIS, infrastructure, defense, insurance, or government-services domains.
• Background at leading data/AI-driven technology organizations (e.g., large-scale platform companies) with a builder's mindset.
• Familiarity with knowledge graphs vs. enterprise ontology and domain-level MDM survivorship.
• Exposure to compliance regimes relevant to federal and regulated work (e.g., FedRAMP).
• Advanced degree in a quantitative, computer science, or engineering discipline.

• In 90 days: a clear picture of MBI's data state, a governance motion underway, and data contracts defined.
• In 6 months: a governed trusted-data layer live, feeding at least one production AI/agent workflow.
• In 12 months: agentic AI expanding safely across platforms and products on a reliable, well-governed data foundation.
• Data-state coverage: 100% of priority source systems (Oracle, HCM, GIS, project/product systems) inventoried, classified, and lineage-mapped within 90 days. 
• Trusted-data layer live: Governed data mart/factory in production feeding ≥1 AI/agent workflow within 6 months; ≥5 domains onboarded within 12 months. 
• Data quality: ≥95% pass rate on defined quality checks (completeness, accuracy, freshness) across governed datasets. 
• AI readiness score: ≥90% of governed data meeting the six-C standard (clean, contextual, consumable, current, correlated, compliant). 
• Agentic AI in production: ≥5 production-grade agent workflows deployed on trusted data within 12 months, each with evaluation and guardrail coverage. 
• AI reliability: Grounded-response/agent task success rate ≥90% with hallucination/error rate below an agreed threshold on evaluated workloads. 
• Governance adoption: Data contracts and federated ownership established for ≥80% of critical data domains; documented stewardship for each. 
• Compliance: Zero critical data-classification or PII-handling incidents; FedRAMP/controlled-data requirements met for all in-scope federal workloads. 
• Business value: Documented impact from data/AI products (revenue, efficiency, or cycle-time), with ≥3 quantified use cases delivered in year one. 
• Platform continuity & cost: No SLA-impacting disruption to existing tools during migration; platform cost-per-workload tracked and optimized against budget.

About UsMichael Baker International, a leading provider of engineering and consulting services, including design, planning, architectural, environmental, construction and program management, has been solving some of the world’s most complex infrastructure challenges for more than 85 years with a legacy of expertise, experience, innovation and integrity.

Based in Pittsburgh and with over 100 offices nationwide, we partner with clients on everything from roads, bridges, tunnels, mass transit, and airports, to water treatment plants, arctic oil pipelines, environmental restoration and specialized overseas construction. We serve as a trusted adviser to the communities we serve, making them safer, more accessible, more sustainable and more prosperous.

We provide visionary leadership in facilitating transformational change for our clients. Our work delivers differentiating innovations and dedicated experts who challenge the status quo and share a world of diverse experience and an impassioned entrepreneurial spirit. We deliver quality of life.

We Make a Difference.