AI COE Lead

Job Title: AI COE Lead

University-Level Unit: NUS Information Technology

Faculty/Department-Level Unit: Applications - Enterprise Services

Employee Category: Executive & Administrative

Location_ONB: Kent Ridge Campus

Posting Start Date: 28/10/2026

What You Do

As the University steps up its focus on AI adoption, demand is growing for solutions across faculties, business units and NUS IT. Advances in AI are also making some solutions viable that would previously have been too complex to develop. NUS IT is helping the University turn its AI ambition into action, and the AI COE will play a central role in delivering solutions that create lasting value.

As the AI COE Lead, you shape and manage NUS IT’s portfolio of AI projects, guide business-led initiatives from promising ideas to governed solutions, and drive AI automation within NUS IT to streamline processes, improve service quality and reduce reliance on vendor licences and services.

Reporting directly to the Head of Enterprise Services, you lead multidisciplinary squads of AI Solution Specialists, Forward Deployed Engineers and other experts, bringing together direct and matrixed team members from across functional and engineering towers. You build strong partnerships with both business and IT stakeholders to understand their needs, guide solutions from experimentation through deployment, and support adoption and change.

Within the Enterprise Services Tower, you work closely with the AI-Know Product Team and AI Acceleration Team to connect delivery with shared platform capabilities and institutional enablement.

Key responsibilities

AI Portfolio & Value Management
Maintain a unified view of AI initiatives supported by NUS IT and coordinate demand assessment, prioritisation and delivery capacity with functional teams.
Identify opportunities for reuse, as well as duplication and dependencies, to guide decisions on which initiatives to pursue, scale, defer or stop.
Establish portfolio reporting and value measurement, tracking costs, progress and realised outcomes with functional teams and business owners.
AI Solution Delivery
Lead multidisciplinary delivery squads comprising AI Solution Specialists, Forward Deployed Engineers and other specialists, aligning direct and matrixed team members across functional and engineering towers.
Oversee end-to-end solution delivery from design and implementation through integration and successful deployment, managing delivery plans, dependencies, risks and resources.
Lead stakeholder engagement and change management with business owners and affected teams, supporting adoption and readiness for deployment.
Establish the target operating model for each solution, including ownership, support arrangements and the capabilities needed for ongoing operation.
Lead AI automation initiatives across NUS IT, particularly in IT infrastructure, to reduce reliance on vendor licences and services while maintaining required service levels.
AI Innovation
Assess promising AI opportunities surfaced through workshops and communities of practice run by the AI Acceleration Team, and by functional teams on behalf of their business stakeholders.
Lead structured prototyping and experimentation to test AI capabilities against the proposed use cases and assess the overall viability of potential solutions.
Use the findings to recommend whether opportunities should stop, be refined or progress to solution delivery.
AI Solution Architecture & Governance
Work with the Enterprise Architecture Team to apply reference architectures, implementation patterns and reusable components across AI solutions.
Guide solution teams in selecting institutionally approved platforms and technologies, balancing business needs, integration requirements and costs.
Ensure solutions comply with Enterprise Architecture’s AI implementation guidelines and meet technical design and Solution Review Board requirements. You also ensure AI risks are assessed and managed in line with institutional risk management requirements.
Identify recurring capability needs and feed them into the AI-Know Product Team’s roadmap to promote reuse, or to the AI Acceleration Team to address knowledge gaps through enhanced training content.

Who You Are

Motivated by developing and delivering solutions that help stakeholders succeed.

Take pride in understanding the problem behind a request and shaping practical responses that improve how people work.

You are meticulous and attentive to detail, while keeping sight of the intended outcome. You are comfortable using numbers and analytics to assess opportunities, compare options and understand whether solutions are delivering value.

Keep abreast of leading commercial AI products and their capabilities, looking for ways to apply them to real needs. You learn from delivery and feedback in the field, and actively surface opportunities to improve our AI platform and enablement offerings.

Enjoy building strong working relationships with both IT and business stakeholders. You advocate constructively for better ways of working and help people understand and adopt change.

Experience & Leadership Expertise

Must Have

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
10+ years of experience in technology, digital transformation or a related field, including leadership of complex, cross-functional initiatives.
Proven experience managing a portfolio or programme of technology projects.
Experience leading AI-enabled solutions from discovery and prototyping through implementation, integration and deployment.
Strong understanding of generative AI and AI agent approaches, including their capabilities, limitations and delivery considerations.
Sufficient technical depth to assess solution designs, platform choices, integration needs and operational requirements, and to work effectively with architects and engineering teams.
Experience leading multidisciplinary teams w