AI Solutions Director

About the Team and Department

The AI Adoption & Solutions Team defines and advances Franklin Templeton’s enterprise AI vision and strategy, translating rapidly evolving AI capabilities into scalable solutions, new ways of working, and measurable business value. The team serves as a trusted AI advisor and consultant to businesses across the firm, helping leaders reimagine how work gets done, and embed AI directly into the tools and workflows where employees work to promote effective, responsible, and sustained AI usage. In partnership with business teams, the team incubates and co-creates AI solutions through prototyping, helping promising ideas progress toward scalable enterprise capabilities. AI enablement builds enterprise AI fluency through education, training, hands‑on learning, communities and practical resources that empower employees to use AI effectively in their day‑to‑day work. The team also helps foster an AI‑forward culture and shape the future of work, enabling new human‑AI ways of working and accelerating adoption in close partnership with Change Management, Technology, Risk, Legal and Compliance, and other enterprise functions. Ultimately, the team connects AI strategy, advisory, solutions, enablement and adoption to help Franklin Templeton continuously capture value from AI as the technology and the asset management industry evolve.

About The Role

The AI Solutions Director is the business‑facing leader of the AI solutioning team, accountable for AI incubation, strategy & roadmap, POC build, and the business value and transformation those solutions deliver. They own the relationship with strategic lines of business (sales & distribution, investments, executive initiatives), translate their needs into a prioritized solution roadmap, and drive solutions from discovery through functional POC to handoff to LOB product teams or Forward‑Deployed Engineers (FDEs). This is a product‑leadership role, not a hands‑on architecture role: the Pod Lead owns the “what” and the business outcome, while the offshore Architect owns the “how” and the build. The Lead needs enough technical fluency to translate between business intent and the offshore engineering team, and enough executive presence to be credible in senior business settings.

How You Will Add Value

• Own the business interface — build trusted relationships with strategic LOB and executive stakeholders.
• AI Incubation: lead working session, hackathons, discovery to surface, qualify, and incubate high‑value AI opportunities, separating real business cases from activity.
• Strategy & Roadmap: shape LOB AI strategy and translate business needs into a prioritized solution roadmap aligned with the Head's firm‑level prioritization.
• POC Build: direct the build team to move solutions rapidly from concept to functional POC, with clear success criteria.
• Transformation: drive business transformation by reimagining end‑to‑end workflows with AI, not just automating isolated tasks.
• Own the graduation decision: ensure each POC either transitions cleanly to an LOB product team / FDE or is deliberately sunset — no standing fleet of half‑finished POCs.
• Manage the handoff interface with peer product and delivery teams so nothing lands on them by surprise.
• Line‑manage US‑based Solutions Leads; assign domain ownership and coach on business‑facing solutioning.
• Business Value: define business values and success metrics up front, then track and report business value delivered and adoption of shipped solutions.

Required Skills & Experience

• Proven product or solution leadership delivering AI or data products with measurable business impact.
• Track record in AI incubation and rapid POC build — taking ideas from concept to validated proof of value.
• Strong business acumen and executive presence; credible with senior stakeholders in a strategic setting.
• Discovery and requirements expertise — able to translate ambiguous business problems into buildable solution definitions.
• Experience shaping AI strategy & roadmaps and leading business transformation at enterprise scale.
• Sufficient technical fluency in AI and agentic systems to direct and translate for an engineering team, without needing to build personally.
• Experience managing distributed or offshore delivery teams and cross‑team handoffs.
• A track record of prioritization and saying no — protecting finite build capacity.
• People‑leadership and coaching experience.