Sr. Director, AI Architecture & Governance

Vuori is re-defining what athletic apparel looks like: built to move and sweat in but designed with a casual aesthetic to transition into everyday life. We draw inspiration from an active coastal California lifestyle; an integration of fitness, creative expression and life. Our high energy fast paced retail environment is reflected in the clothes we make. We aim to inspire others to take on all aspects of their lives with clarity, enthusiasm and purpose…while having a lot of fun along the way. We are proud to be an outlet for opportunity and for personal growth and success. The Vuori AI team is laying the foundation for the future of Vuori's AI ecosystem, building the platforms, tools, and frameworks that power AI-driven productivity, workflow automation, intelligent decision-making, and agentic implementations across the business. Our mission is to transform how work gets done by leveraging modern AI technologies, autonomous agents, and intelligent systems to solve real business problems, accelerate innovation, and create measurable impact at scale.  As Sr. Director of AI Architecture & Governance, you will serve as Vuori's senior-most technical authority on AI platform design, enterprise standards, and responsible AI. You will set the architectural direction for how AI systems are built and integrated across the organization, and establish the governance frameworks that ensure those systems are secure, compliant, scalable, and trustworthy.  This role calls for a rare combination of deep technical expertise and organizational leadership — someone who can engage at the level of system design with engineers while also shaping AI strategy with executive and business partners. You will work across teams and functions to raise the quality and consistency of AI development at Vuori, and put in place the standards and guardrails that let teams innovate with confidence.  What you'll get to do: Set direction and raise the bar  - Shape the evolution of Vuori's enterprise AI architecture, ensuring it keeps pace with the growth of the business and the maturity of the AI ecosystem.  - Establish reference architectures, engineering standards, and integration patterns that teams across Vuori use when building AI systems.  - Lead technical evaluations of AI platforms, foundation models, cloud services, and tooling — recommending adoption decisions based on rigorous analysis of performance, cost, security, and fit.  - Raise the architectural capability of engineers across Vuori through design reviews, pairing, documentation, and reusable patterns others adopt because they are good.  - Bring clarity to complex, ambiguous problems — including calling out when a proposed AI approach is not the right solution.  - Make build-versus-buy-versus-partner recommendations that shape the AI platform for years, and communicate the rationale clearly to technical and non-technical audiences. Build and maintain AI governance  - Develop and operationalize Vuori's AI governance framework, covering model risk management, data privacy, bias detection, audit trails, and regulatory compliance.  - Establish AI engineering standards, security guardrails, testing and evaluation protocols, and responsible AI policies that apply consistently across all teams building AI systems.  - Create governance structures that give teams a clear path to building and shipping AI responsibly — balancing speed of innovation with enterprise-grade risk management.  - Partner with Legal, Compliance, Security, and Data teams to ensure AI systems meet applicable regulations, data handling requirements, and ethical standards.  - Implement ongoing monitoring, incident response, and continuous improvement processes for AI systems in production. Partner across the organization  - Work closely with senior technology and business leaders to align AI architecture and governance with organizational priorities and investment decisions.  - Serve as a clear, credible voice on AI architecture and risk in conversations with executive sponsors, engineering leadership, and external partners or auditors.  - Collaborate with AI product, engineering, and data teams to ensure architectural and governance requirements are understood and built in from the start — not added after the fact.  - Mentor engineers and technical leads through architectural guidance, design reviews, and the development of shared standards they can apply independently. Measure and evolve  - Track and report on platform reliability, governance adherence, security posture, and the business impact of AI architecture investments.  - Continuously assess the AI landscape and incorporate emerging technologies, best practices, and industry standards to keep Vuori's AI ecosystem well-positioned.  - Use data and operational experience to refine standards, improve governance processes, and remove friction for teams building AI responsibly.  Who you are: - Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field; advanced degree preferred.  - 15+ years of experience in software engineering or technology architecture, including 5+ years leading enterprise AI or data platform architecture at scale.  - Demonstrated experience designing and governing AI systems in production — including LLMs, agentic systems, ML pipelines, and model serving infrastructure.  - Deep expertise in enterprise AI governance, risk management, security, and compliance frameworks.  - Proven ability to develop and enforce technical standards and architectural principles across large, cross-functional engineering organizations.  - Experience with cloud-native architectures on Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, and modern AI infrastructure patterns including RAG, vector databases, and orchestration frameworks.  - Experience building and deploying with frontier AI lab models, platforms, and/or frameworks (i.e. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, etc.).   - Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to explain complex AI architecture and governance requirements clearly to engineering, business, and executive audiences.  - Strong leadership presence and experience building alignment across a matrixed organization without direct authority over all stakeholders.  - Experience with enterprise AI governance platforms, model risk management frameworks, or AI regulatory standards such as the EU AI Act or NIST AI RMF.  - Familiarity with MLOps, model lifecycle management, AI observability, and responsible AI tooling.  - Experience with low-code and pro-code enterprise AI platforms such as Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Copilot Studio, or Google Gemini Enterprise.  - Background in retail, direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, or a similar consumer operating environment.  - Demonstrated ability to build and scale architecture and governance programs in high-growth organizations.  - Active engagement with the broader AI and technology community through publications, speaking, or open-source contributions.  Our investment in you: At Vuori, we’re proud to offer the following to our employees:  - Health Insurance  - Savings and Retirement Plan   - Employee Assistance Program  - Generous Vuori Discount & Industry Perks  - Paid Time Off   - Wellness & Fitness benefits  The salary range for this role is $215,300 per year - $288,225 per year. This role is bonus eligible.  Vuori is proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law.   All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.