Senior Director, AI Technical Programs

About the role

Applied Materials is seeking a Senior Director to lead AI technical programs that accelerate the Process Support Engineer (PSE) community. You will define strategy, drive execution, and ensure AI solutions deliver real productivity gains while meeting security, IP, and compliance standards.

Key responsibilities

• Design and deliver AI tools that help PSEs find information quickly, summarize technical content, troubleshoot, automate workflows, and generate reports.
• Maintain AI‑ready knowledge bases, implement controls for access, and provide chat/search assistants for consistent guidance.
• Evaluate platforms, models, and vendors; run pilots, compare options, and recommend solutions that improve PSE capability.
• Own the program roadmap, define success metrics, prioritize use cases, manage risks, and report outcomes to leadership.
• Lead a small team of AI practitioners, guiding prototyping, integration with data sources, and scaling of solutions.
• Develop hands‑on training, playbooks, and sessions to drive adoption and measure proficiency across the PSE community.

Required profile

• Proven ability to run large technical programs end‑to‑end, balancing scope, schedule, budget, and outcomes.
• Strong influence skills across business units and centralized AI groups without direct authority.
• Systematic problem‑solving mindset for messy inputs, data quality issues, and model behavior.
• Experience translating AI work into measurable business impact such as productivity, quality, and operational performance.

Required skills

• AI/ML
• Generative AI (GenAI)
• Knowledge‑management and retrieval systems
• Data governance and security
• Responsible AI practices
• Model lifecycle management

What we offer

• Competitive salary range of $200,000 – $275,000 per year.
• Supportive work culture with opportunities for learning, development, and growth in Santa Clara, CA.