Senior Director of Strategy and Operations
Montreal-based non-profit academic AI research institute advancing machine learning through open-science research, talent development, technology transfer, responsible AI, and industry innovation.
Funding history
Investors
About Mila – Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute
Mila is a non-profit AI research hub created through collaboration between Université de Montréal and McGill University, with Polytechnique Montréal and HEC Montréal. Its community conducts machine-learning research and supports AI adoption, training, and technology transfer.
Skills
Candidate Availability
Required and preferred rules are kept separate and reflect the wording in the original posting.
About the Role
You will lead integrated annual and multi-year strategic planning, connecting priorities, budgets, workforce plans, and OKRs. You will enable portfolio prioritization, define strategic indicators, establish execution rhythms, and remove cross-functional bottlenecks. You will build project-management capabilities, lead major initiatives, develop business cases and executive materials, and manage a small strategy team.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in business administration, economics, finance, engineering, or a related field.
- Master's degree such as an MBA or M.Sc. is a major asset.
- At least 10 years of relevant experience.
- Ideally 5 or more years in in-house strategy, strategic operations, BizOps, or a chief of staff role.
- Proven team-management experience.
- Ability to lead strategic initiatives from initial design and business-case development through implementation.
- Experience managing multidisciplinary teams and external partners.
- Ability to lead through influence in a matrix environment.
- Expertise in strategic planning, market intelligence, hypothesis formulation, financial modeling, and business cases.
- Experience mapping and optimizing workflows, implementing SBR/QBR management rhythms and OKR frameworks, and removing operational bottlenecks.
- Experience with portfolio management or project-management capability building is an asset.
- Experience designing business models, partnership structures, large-scale AI projects, or training programs.
- Professional written and spoken French and English.
Responsibilities
- Lead annual and multi-year strategic planning.
- Structure and run an integrated planning cycle linking strategic priorities, budget, workforce planning, and OKRs.
- Maintain strategic and competitive intelligence on AI trends, innovation models, and organizational practices.
- Develop feasibility studies, market analyses, financial models, impact assessments, and business cases.
- Prepare strategic summaries and executive-level presentations.
- Enable executive portfolio prioritization through consolidated views, intake processes, capacity analysis, and trade-off scenarios.
- Define success indicators and remove cross-functional dependencies.
- Establish execution governance, including Quarterly Business Reviews, alignment protocols, and inter-team SLAs.
- Define operating structures, stage gates, and delivery rules for cross-functional initiatives.
- Map, simplify, and optimize critical cross-functional workflows.
- Build project-management methods, tools, templates, portfolio tracking, coaching, and a community of practice.
- Directly lead major cross-functional strategic initiatives.
- Support directors in designing, evolving, and launching business models, partnership structures, AI projects, and training programs.
- Manage a small team of Senior Strategy Advisors.
Benefits
- Comprehensive group insurance, including health, dental, disability, life, travel, and extended benefits.
- Employee and family assistance program.
- Telemedicine service.
- 20 days of vacation upon hiring.
- Retirement savings plan with a minimum 4% employer contribution.
- Flexible benefits package, including lifestyle credits, enhanced insurance, additional vacation, and enriched pension contributions.
- Flexible working hours.
- Summer schedule.
- Possibility of telecommuting.