Director of Applied AI

COMPANY OVERVIEW
About Daybright Financial
Simply put, we are one of the nation’s largest independent, privately held firms specializing in employee benefits, retirement plans, and all their associated compliance needs. Since 2008, we have grown by acquiring over 60 local and national firms that have been trusted members of their communities for decades. We hold the coveted “Best Places to Work – USA,” certification and serve more than 22,000 employer groups and 3.6 million plan participants nationally.
Daybright Financial also operates a dedicated independent divisional team, Daybright Broker Solutions, to further enhance the services, support, and marketing resources to grow the businesses of benefits brokers and consultants and enable professional employer organizations (PEOs) to bring more to the table for their clients — through the seamless delivery of Fortune 500-level health and financial wellness solutions.
For more information on Daybright Financial, visit daybright.com. Follow Daybright on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Daybright is currently seeking a Director of Applied AI to join our Corporate Office. Be part of a team of thought leaders and seasoned benefits and retirement planning professionals.

position summary:
The Director of Applied AI leads Daybright Financial's AI Center of Excellence (AI CoE) and owns the design and delivery of high-value, Microsoft-first artificial intelligence capabilities across the enterprise. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, this is a builder-operator role rather than a theoretical strategist position: the successful candidate will translate Daybright's AI vision into production-ready solutions that deliver measurable business impact within months, not years.
As Daybright continues to modernize its platforms and evolve as One Daybright, the company is investing in artificial intelligence as a strategic enabler of growth, efficiency, and differentiated client experience. This role defines and implements the Microsoft-first AI reference architecture, leads the delivery of priority use cases, and builds a repeatable operating model for secure, governed AI adoption across the company. The approach is pragmatic, security-minded, and focused on measurable business value, not experimentation for its own sake.

Job Responsibilties:
AI Execution & Value Delivery: Translate Daybright's AI strategy into a prioritized portfolio of high-value use cases with visible operational or commercial impact. Deliver two to three production AI solutions within the first 6–12 months, focused on clear outcomes such as cycle-time reduction, improved throughput, better decision support, or enhanced customer and employee experience. Establish a disciplined MVP-first delivery model that emphasizes speed-to-value, adoption, and measurable outcomes.
Enterprise AI Architecture: Design and implement Daybright's Azure-native AI platform, including Azure OpenAI, Azure AI services, Copilot, and agent-based workflows where appropriate. Create reference architectures and reusable patterns for prompt orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), API integration, monitoring, and model governance. Ensure solutions are scalable, reliable, secure, and cost-efficient for a midsize, private-equity-backed enterprise environment.
AI Governance & Responsible AI: Operationalize AI governance in partnership with Cybersecurity, Compliance, Legal, and business leadership. Implement controls for responsible AI, privacy, auditability, human-in-the-loop workflows, and regulatory alignment. Create practical guardrails that enable fast innovation while protecting Daybright's data, clients, and reputation.
Partner & Ecosystem Leadership: Work closely with strategic partners across the Microsoft ecosystem to accelerate Daybright's AI roadmap. Own outcomes from partner-delivered work, ensuring knowledge transfer and internal capability building rather than long-term dependency. Lead build-versus-buy decisions, technology evaluations, and partner scoping for selected use cases.
AI CoE & Organizational Enablement: Stand up and lead a lean AI Center of Excellence that can support multiple business units and technology teams. Coach engineers, analysts, and business leads on practical AI patterns, tools, and best practices. Act as an internal AI evangelist, translating complex technical concepts into clear guidance for executives, operational leaders, and delivery teams.

Required Skills/Experience
The successful candidate is a hands-on technical leader who is equally credible with an executive sponsor and with an engineer — someone who can design the architecture, build the solution that proves it works, and explain the business case to a non-technical audience.

RELATED COMPETENCIES:
AI & Machine Learning Delivery
Enterprise & Solution Architecture
Microsoft AI Platform
Hands-On Engineering
Cloud-Native Design
Responsible AI & Governance
Business Pragmatism
Communication

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:
7-12+ years of experience in software engineering, architecture, data engineering, or related technical domains.
Demonstrated success delivering AI or machine learning solutions into production environments.
Experience designing cloud-native solutions; Azure strongly preferred.
Experience with Azure AI, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, Copilot Studio, Power Platform, or related Microsoft AI services is preferred. or acquisitive organization, including intercompany accounting and consolidations.
Experience in financial services, benefits, insurance, or another regulated industry is preferred.
Experience building or scaling AI capabilities in midsize or growth-oriented organizations is preferred.
Track record of leading delivery with consulting firms, technology partners, or systems integrators is preferred.

Hybrid position - NJ