Head of Data & AI

Head of Data & AI

Employment Type: Full-Time

Department: Engineering

Compensation: $160k - $180k base | 20% bonus target

Location: Denver, CO preferred (not required); regular and frequent travel to Denver required

Hiring Priority Tier 1: Critical | Target time-to-fill: 30–60 days

About meQ

meQuilibrium (meQ) is a clinically validated workforce resilience platform serving Global 2000 and public-sector employers. Combining behavioral science, AI, and personalized digital coaching, meQ helps organizations reduce burnout, strengthen psychological safety, and improve workforce performance at scale.

Trusted by Fortune 500 companies and leading employers across industries, meQ delivers both population-level insights and individualized support through a platform designed for measurable business impact.

We are a mission-driven company that believes resilience is a skill — one that can be learned, measured, and scaled.

We are hiring a Head of Data & AI to build and lead this function through its next phase of growth and maturity.

This is not a steady-state leadership role inheriting a fully built organization. It is a hands-on rebuild and scale opportunity for a leader who thrives in creating structure, technical direction, and team capability from the ground up. Reporting to the VP of Engineering and partnering closely with the CTO on AI product strategy, you will define how meQ’s proprietary dataset evolves into production-grade AI capabilities and customer-facing outcomes.

You will establish the vision and operating model across data engineering, analytics, machine learning, and AI enablement — while helping shape the hiring strategy and organizational design as the function grows. The current team is intentionally lean, and early hiring focus will center on building foundational AI/ML engineering capability alongside strengthening the broader data platform.

Data Platform & Engineering

• Own the data platform end-to-end: ingestion, storage, transformation, governance, and serving layers for the meQ and RippleWorx product lines.
• Drive convergence of the meQ and RippleWorx data models into a unified, multi-tenant architecture, in close partnership with the Principal Architect.
• Govern and protect the proprietary dataset as a strategic asset: lineage, access controls, and customer data residency.
• Eliminate single-points-of-failure in data ownership through documentation, cross-training, and on-call coverage.

AI & Machine Learning

• Own the end-to-end AI/ML lifecycle: model development, validation, governance, explainability, bias evaluation, and production deployment, using foundation models applied to meQ's proprietary dataset.
• Define and execute the applied AI strategy for turning meQ's behavioral and resilience data into production AI features, covering retrieval architectures, model adaptation, embedding infrastructure, and evaluation frameworks.
• Build the responsible AI program covering transparency, customer disclosures, and emerging regulatory requirements relevant to workforce data.
• Partner with the CTO on the AI product roadmap; translate strategy into a concrete technical execution plan for the data and AI team.
• Hire and develop the AI/ML Engineering Lead as the first dedicated applied AI resource in the function.

BI & Analytics

• Own customer-facing analytics and internal BI, including the Tableau/WFI reporting estate and analytics modernization to support enterprise customer commitments.
• Define build vs. buy approach across BI tooling, vector infrastructure, and ML platform components.

People & Operating Cadence

• Build and manage the data team across engineering, science, and analytics (currently four people, growing to five or six with planned hires).
• Partner with the VP of Engineering on operating cadence, board-level reporting on the AI roadmap, and delivery predictability.

• 8 years in data and ML roles in B2B SaaS, including 3 years leading a function spanning data engineering, ML/data science, and analytics/BI.
• Demonstrated experience taking ML or AI models from research into production at enterprise scale, with model governance, validation, and explainability practices in place.
• Practical experience building applied AI solutions on top of proprietary datasets using foundation models, covering the full lifecycle: retrieval architectures, model adaptation, embedding infrastructure, and evaluation frameworks.
• Clear, defensible point of view on what makes a retrieval-based AI system production-ready versus a proof of concept, covering evaluation pipelines, observability, retrieval quality measurement, and failure modes. You've had to defend that view to a customer, compliance team, or auditor.
• Experience building AI model governance frameworks in a regulated or enterprise context: auditability, drift detection, regression testing, explainability, and rollback protocols.
• Track record building and operating a modern data platform (warehouse, lakehouse, streaming, vector) in a multi-tenant SaaS environment.
• Experience with data privacy and customer data handling in a regulated context (HIPAA-adjacent, GDPR, or federal).
• Experience in a PE- or VC-backed business with disciplined board-level reporting.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, or a related field; advanced degree preferred.

• Experience in HCM, workforce health, behavioral health, or talent performance product categories.
• Experience working alongside clinical or behavioral science research teams to translate research into production AI.
• Experience in FedRAMP/StateRAMP-governed data environments.
• Experience making build-vs-buy decisions on vector retrieval infrastructure (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, OpenSearch, or equivalent) in a production retrieval or semantic search context.

Compensation: The base salary range for this role is $160k - $180k base | 20% bonus target. This range reflects the expected compensation for this position; final offers may vary based on experience, skills, and location. The role also includes a comprehensive benefits package, featuring health and dental coverage and an unlimited paid time off policy.

meQuilibrium is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We're committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.