Senior Director, AI Development and Go to Market Strategy

About Community Solutions:

Community Solutions is a “field catalyst” working to align and mobilize actors, locally and nationally, who impact homelessness toward the shared goal of making homelessness rare and brief, everywhere. The organization directly supports more than 140 communities in the US in implementing accountable, community-wide efforts that drive measurable reductions in homelessness. This solutions-focused approach involves rigorous collaboration of public and private efforts, comprehensive, real-time information on those experiencing homelessness, and increased access to housing. By 2027, Community Solutions’ network aims to reach a tipping point where homelessness is widely perceived to be solvable and public opinion has measurably shifted to support solutions; reductions in homelessness have been achieved in a diverse and growing array of communities, and solutions-focused policies increasingly drive federal, state, and local responses.

Achieving this “tipping point” requires the political will of elected officials, which in turn requires the expectation and support of community leaders. 

Position Overview:

Community Solutions has built working AI tools in-house, quickly and at a cost that wasn’t possible before, and our portfolio is growing. The constraint now is that nearly all of the hands-on work, building the tools, making the build-or-partner calls, carrying the funder and technology relationships, preparing and executing a testing and deployment strategy and forecasting the role that AI may play in our future strategy for making homelessness rare and brief nationwide sits with a small group part-time. This role is being established to change that.

The Senior Director, AI Development and Go to Market Strategy will lead the organization’s AI work in the field: guiding the building and shipping of tools for testing and refinement within our network of 170+ communities and informing the strategy for moving high impact prototypes into adoption across the network. The Senior Director will inform and apply Community Solutions’ principles around AI use and assure everything produced keeps a human in the decision loop and protects the dignity and data of the people the work serves. The Senior Director will be responsible for reviewing AI tools throughout development and deployment to control for bias.

Day-to-day, the Senior Director will oversee the AI portfolio and direct AI-related work of the Principal of Policy and Evaluation, a Data Scientist, and a program manager, with the scope and expectation that the team may grow as required by the work. The Senior Director will be responsible for developing a budget for the go to market strategy for approval by Community Solutions' Executive Team and Board of Directors.

Defining Success for this Position in Year One:

• At least one AI tool moves from prototype to active use in Community Solutions’ partner communities.
• The privacy-safe infrastructure needed to pilot tools that touch sensitive data is stood up and validated.
• At least one meaningful technology or funding partnership is established that did not exist before this person joined.
• The portfolio compounds, with tools building on each other rather than accumulating as one-offs.
• The Year One AI strategy aligns with and informs Community Solutions’ post-2026 strategy. 
• Community Solutions has a credible, grounded voice on AI in homelessness response, demonstrated through what we ship and what we publish.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

A meaningful part of the role may involve building. The Senior Director will determine optimal strategies for developing and testing AI tools and prototypes, will own the technical architecture for the portfolio, and make the call on what to build in-house versus what to partner on or contract out. For anything touching client data, the Senior Director will be responsible for establishing a privacy-safe and local deployment approach.

Much of the initial work is expected to be external facing but will interact with the in-house development team and potential development partners to continually refine high impact products  manage relationships with technology partners, pursue opportunities through corporate AI programs, accelerators, and philanthropy, and track the AI for good landscape closely enough to move on time-sensitive windows. The Senior Director will be expected to carry key build and implementation relationships directly.

For the essential field adoption and governance questions involved in testing and implementing AI tools, the Senior Director will oversee the work with partner communities to pilot tools, gather feedback, and determine a scale strategy for tested tools with high impact potential. This will involve guiding the translation of tools into documentation and training accessible to practitioners.

Professional Experience and Qualifications:

• The combination this role requires is unusual: technical depth, product judgment, and the ability to manage external partnerships without much hand-holding. 
• Demonstrated ability to build with current AI tools and ship working software, with comfort across the stack, APIs, prototyping, and data work. Familiarity with model deployment, security, and compliance is a strong plus.
• Product judgment, meaning a track record of knowing what is worth building and what isn’t.
• Experience managing partnerships with external organizations, ideally including technology or funding partners.
• Comfort operating in ambiguous, fast-moving situations and a bias toward shipping over planning.
• Commitment to Community Solutions’ mission. Familiarity with homelessness or human services, data is a plus, or the ability to learn it fast matters more.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work credibly with field users, technology partners and funders.

Salary

CS offers competitive salaries and benefits packages for every position. The salary range for this position is between $168,827-191,848. The actual salary is commensurate with the candidate's experience.

Work Environment

The position provides for the flexibility to work from a remote US location without the standard support available at an office. Travel will be required to meet with communities, partners and allies.

Diversity and Inclusion

We strive for inclusivity and diversity by attracting extraordinary people from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences. We seek to employ an all-star team of people who vary by their race and ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, age, culture, religion, veteran status, physical and mental abilities. We promote equal opportunity in the recruitment, selection, training, compensation, promotion, and benefits of all employees. Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act.