We are looking for a senior leader to build the firm’s AI deployment and community capability. This person will lead forward deployed AI practitioners who embed with product and engineering teams, help those teams solve consequential problems, and turn field learning into a practical AI product development lifecycle. At the same time, they will build the internal community, reusable-asset platform, contribution model, and incentives that allow successful work to spread across the organization.

The role connects delivery and leverage. It ensures that every deployment creates a local outcome and a reusable organizational asset: an agent skill, evaluation harness, workflow pattern, reference implementation, playbook, or lesson that another team can discover, trust, adapt, and improve. The ideal candidate combines applied AI and platform depth, product and operating-model judgment, community-building instincts, and the interpersonal credibility to earn trust with teams rather than feel imposed on them.

How you will add value

Forward Deployment and AI Product Development Lifecycle (45 Percent)

• Build and lead a forward deployed AI practitioner capability that embeds with product and engineering teams to solve real problems while transferring practical AI skills.
• Select, prioritize, and staff deployments based on business value, learning potential, technical feasibility, and the opportunity to create reusable enterprise capability.
• Personally lead the most complex, visible, or strategically important engagements, including ambiguous AI opportunities, stalled initiatives, and cross-functional operating-model challenges.
• Partner with engineering, product, architecture, security, data, risk, and business leaders to identify high-leverage AI opportunities and convert them into executable engagements.
• Create and continuously improve an AI-native product development lifecycle that covers discovery, prototyping, data access, agent and model evaluation, human review, risk controls, release, observability, feedback loops, and post-release improvement. *

Community Infrastructure and Management (25 Percent)

• Specify and evolve the internal AI community and InnerSource mechanism for sharing software components, agent skills, prompts, workflows, evaluation assets, documentation, and reference implementations.
• Build a trusted, searchable repository with clear ownership, documentation, quality tiers, contribution workflows, maintenance expectations, and signals that help teams distinguish experimental from supported assets.
• Create community momentum through working groups, office hours, showcases, contributor onboarding, recognition, mentorship, and practical demonstrations of reuse value.
• Design lightweight governance that enables safe and maintainable reuse without slowing experimentation or turning the platform into a bureaucratic control point.
• Work with leaders and HR partners to make contribution, maintenance, mentorship, and reuse visible forms of technical impact.

Shared Responsibilities (30 percent)

• Translate deployment learnings into reusable patterns, reference architectures, templates, evaluation methods, technical standards, and practical playbooks.
• Set the integrated roadmap that links deployment priorities, product development lifecycle improvements, platform investment, and community growth.
• Measure deployment outcomes, reuse, adoption, contributor health, asset quality, capability growth, time saved, and duplication avoided; use the evidence to improve both mandates.
• Provide executive visibility into deployment outcomes, reuse, adoption, risks, constraints, capability growth, and the investment required to scale the practice.
• Ensure that teams retain ownership of their systems while benefiting from shared assets, collective learning, and a consistent path from experimentation to responsible production use., * Equal comfort discussing code, architecture, product strategy, operating models, adoption, and executive-level tradeoffs.
• A pragmatic systems thinker who reduces friction and coordination cost rather than adding methodology for its own sake.
• A community builder who makes contribution and reuse feel prestigious, useful, and safe.
• Strong product instincts for discoverability, onboarding, documentation, trust signals, sandboxing, and developer experience.
• The judgment to know when to standardize, when to preserve local autonomy, and when an exception is the right answer.
• A bias toward measurable outcomes, durable capability-building, and visible wins over one-off demonstrations.

Measures of Success

• Embedded teams move high-value AI opportunities from ambiguous ideas to production outcomes or well-supported stop decisions faster and with less coordination burden.
• Teams report increased AI fluency, delivery confidence, and ownership after deployments.
• Patterns from deployments become reusable assets that other teams can find, trust, adopt, and improve.
• The organization increasingly reuses AI components and methods instead of rebuilding them independently.
• Community participation grows through contributors, maintainers, mentors, and champions across business units.
• Lightweight governance improves confidence, quality, and maintainability without becoming a bottleneck.
• Senior stakeholders view the function as a partner that accelerates responsible delivery and creates enterprise leverage.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Customer Relations, Asset Management, Product Lifecycle, Product Development, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Problem Solving Skills, Product Engineering, Interpersonal Skills, Workflow Analysis, * Senior experience in a combination of forward deployed engineering, applied AI, AI platform engineering, technical product leadership, enterprise architecture, developer experience, InnerSource or open-source program leadership, or technical transformation.

• Demonstrated ability to work hands-on with engineering teams in ambiguous environments and convert messy problems into working systems, credible technical paths, or durable operating practices.
• Strong understanding of modern AI application patterns, including agents, tool use, retrieval, evaluation, prompt and skill versioning, observability, workflow automation, and production risk controls.
• Experience designing or operating product development lifecycles, engineering operating models, platform capabilities, developer platforms, or self-service systems.
• Experience building adoption around a shared technical platform or practice, including contribution workflows, documentation, governance, incentives, and community operations.
• Ability to communicate credibly with senior executives and deeply technical practitioners, and to influence without relying solely on formal authority.
• Track record of earning trust across teams, sharing credit generously, and leaving teams more capable than before the engagement.

Work Schedule & Location

• This role will work a hybrid schedule, 3 days/week in either our San Ramon, CA or San Mateo, CA offices.

Franklin Templeton offers employees a competitive and valuable range of total rewards - monetary and non-monetary - designed to support their well-being and recognize their time, talents, and results. Along with base compensation, employees are eligible for an annual discretionary bonus, a 401(k) plan with a generous match, and recognition rewards. We also offer a comprehensive benefits package, which includes a range of competitive healthcare options, insurance, and disability benefits, employee stock investment program, learning resources, career development programs, reimbursement for certain education expenses, paid time off (vacation / holidays / sick / leave / parental & caregiving leave / bereavement / volunteering / floating holidays) and a motivational wellbeing program. We expect the annual salary for this position to range between $208,600 - $245,500, depending on location and level of relevant experience, plus discretionary bonus.

MID_SENIOR_LEVEL

At Franklin Templeton, we believe your benefits should support your life, your goals, and your future. That’s why we offer a comprehensive Total Rewards package designed to help you thrive both personally and professionally.

Highlights of our benefits include:

• Paid Time Off: Three weeks of PTO in your first year
• Health Coverage: Competitive medical, dental, and vision insurance to support your well-being
• Retirement Savings: 401(k) plan with an 85% company match on pre-tax and/or Roth contributions, up to IRS limits
• Equity & Investing: Employee Stock Investment Plan (ESIP) with discounted share purchase opportunities
• Learning Education Assistance Program (LEAP): To support your ongoing growth and career advancement
• Employee Investment Benefits: Opportunity to purchase company funds with no sales charge

At Franklin Templeton, we believe success is built through powerful partnerships. As a forward thinking asset manager, we build dynamic relationships with clients, understand their goals, and navigate complex markets together. We leverage cutting edge strategies and deep insights to unlock opportunities for long term wealth creation. Our talented, global teams bring expertise that is both broad and unique.

From our welcoming, inclusive, and supportive culture to our globally diverse business, we offer opportunities not only to help you reach your potential, but also to contribute to our clients’ success.