Head of AI Applications (f/m/x)

Your Role:

Technical Leadership

• Shape the future AI & GenAI tech stack at ZEISS by mapping state-of-the-art technology to ZEISS business needs – ensuring scalability, maintainability and cost-effectiveness

• Consult teams in Zeiss Digital Partners and beyond regarding AI & GenAI technologies and implementation

Solution Delivery

• Lead technical project streams through the whole lifecycle, from PoC to fully operational and scaled solutions within an agile framework, ensuring high quality and efficient development, while adhering to ZEISS standards (regulatory, ethical, security)

• Continuously advance best-practices in application development and drive delivery excellence

• Own and drive scoping, budgeting, staffing and stakeholder management for technical project streams

Team Empowerment & Development

• Support project teams with guidance, prioritization and problem solving as needed

• Empower the teams so they are setup for success and can deliver to promise

• Step-in in case of escalations or conflicts

• Ensure balanced workloads and appropriate task allocation

• Promote a culture of innovation, learning, and inclusion aligned with company values and keep the teams' motivation high

Communication & Stakeholder Alignment

• Facilitate clear communication and responsibilities between SBUs, ZDP teams, and AI experts

• Ensure all project sponsors and client-side management understands scope, risks and limitations of joint projects / solutions via clear and effective expectation-management

• Ensure all team members understand business context and client requirements

Team Leadership

• Leading, motivating, assessing, controlling and developing team members in accordance with ZEISS management and leadership principles

• Ensuring the necessary employee qualifications

• Propose salary adjustments and participate in decisions on individual personnel measures (in coordination with the HR department)

• Implement measures for the efficient design of structures and processes in the team

Your Profile:

• An excellent university degree (PhD is a plus) in natural science, mathematics, computer science, engineering or similar

• Several years of professional experience in building and delivering AI & GenAI applications in an enterprise context

• Proven ability to lead diverse development teams

Leadership & Decision Making

• Ability to lead with clarity in a fast-paced environment with high uncertainty and ambiguity

• Experience in leading agile development and product teams

• Ability to enable and empower the development teams, providing guidance, support and prioritization as needed, so they can work effectively

Technical Expertise

• Deep technical understanding of foundational and large language models, the Microsoft AI tech stack, and agentic frameworks like LangChain or AutoGen

• Very strong technical skills, from solution architecture to hands-on software development (Python, Git, DevOps)

Business acumen

• Ability cut through hype and identify most promising and impactful use cases while sorting out noise

• Strong business acumen, understanding relevant aspects of AI- and data-driven business models

• Ability to translate customer needs into effective technical solutions

Interpersonal & communication skills

• Open-minded, flexible and proven ability to successfully work with interdisciplinary and international teams – across teams and departments

• Strong communication and presentation skills, and the ability to drive decision making from operational to CxO level

• Ability to easily navigate corporate, as well as managerial / business and tech environments

• Fluent English and advanced German language skills

Your ZEISS Recruiting Team:

Markus Repp