Sr. Director, IT - AI Innovation and Services

Elastic, the Search AI Company, enables everyone to find the answers they need in real time, using all their data, at scale — unleashing the potential of businesses and people. The Elastic Search AI Platform, used by more than 50% of the Fortune 500, brings together the precision of search and the intelligence of AI to enable everyone to accelerate the results that matter. By taking advantage of all structured and unstructured data — securing and protecting private information more effectively — Elastic’s complete, cloud-based solutions for search, security, and observability help organizations deliver on the promise of AI. What is The Role Elastic is seeking a visionary and experienced Senior IT Director focused on AI Innovation to lead our enterprise-wide AI strategy and technology deployment at Elastic. Reporting directly to the CIO, this high-impact leadership role will be instrumental in shaping and executing our internal AI strategy and elevating business processes by designing innovative AI-driven solutions to increase productivity, reduce operational overhead, and unlock new value. The ideal candidate brings a strong background in hands-on engineering, technical depth, architectural judgement, business analysis, deep knowledge of emerging AI technologies and a proven ability to translate strategy into scalable, secure, and measurable services that are used across the company daily. Ready to influence AI services and lead critical change in a rapidly scaling, publicly traded SaaS environment? This role is where technical expertise meets business velocity! What You Will Be Doing Design future-state workflows inside the company, using Generative and Agentic AI aligned with business goals, productivity outcomes and user needs. Design and pilot these solutions and scale successful initiatives. Conduct deep business process analyses across departments to identify areas for automation, augmentation, or reimagination via AI. Prioritize high-ROI opportunities for AI integration, with a focus on reducing repetitive manual tasks and improving business delivery. Deliver measurable improvements in productivity, operational cost reduction, and process velocity. Design and execute a company-wide change management strategy for AI adoption, including training, communication, and stakeholder alignment. Lead a global cross-functional team that includes product managers, architects and engineers Proven ability to lead multidisciplinary teams from ideation through to successful execution. What You Bring 15+ years of software engineering experience with 8+ years in leadership role 10+ years of consistent achievement in driving engineering, business transformation, strategic advisory, and innovation. Practical experience leading AI, Generative AI, and Agentic AI initiatives aimed at modernizing business functions. Strong technical expertise in agentic AI, workflow automation, orchestration frameworks, and evaluation techniques. Experience designing systems that minimize hallucinations and enforce safe, predictable AI behavior. Hands-on experience with cloud-native AI infrastructure, inference optimization, system wide automation and cost-aware system design. Ability to translate complex AI concepts into practical, mission-ready product capabilities. Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively across technical and non-technical teams. Apply AI and LLMs to reduce costs, improve process efficiency, and modernize legacy operations. Build and lead a team of AI/ML engineers to develop scalable, production-ready solutions. Experience working with enterprise-level systems and other large-scale data platforms. Exceptional communication, facilitation, and narrative-building capabilities tailored for both technical and business-oriented audiences. Compensation for this role is in the form of base salary.  This role does not have a variable compensation component.   The typical starting salary range for new hires in this role is listed below.  In select locations (including Seattle WA, Los Angeles CA, the San Francisco Bay Area CA, and the New York City Metro Area), an alternate range may apply as specified below.  These ranges represent the lowest to highest salary we reasonably and in good faith believe we would pay for this role at the time of this posting.  We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range, and the ranges may be modified in the future.   An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, geographic location, performance, and business or organizational needs. Elastic believes that employees should have the opportunity to share in the value that we create together for our shareholders. Therefore, in addition to cash compensation, this role is currently eligible to participate in Elastic's stock p