VP, Head of Responsible AI

EXL is seeking a visionary VP, Head of Responsible AI to architect trust across our enterprise AI initiatives. Reporting jointly to the CIO and General Counsel, you will accelerate AI adoption while embedding ethical, legal, and security guardrails in a data-centric operations environment. In a data-centric operations environment, this role serves as the bridge between technical innovation and legal safeguard — enforcing a dual mandate: accelerating AI adoption while minimizing systemic risk.

• Define and operationalize a 3-year Responsible & Secure AI maturity roadmap aligned with client commitments and global regulations.
• Co-lead the AI Governance Committee with CIO/GC to unify AI approval and deployment decisions.
• Serve as enterprise spokesperson on AI Trust for clients, regulators, and industry forums.
• Establish the "Source of Truth" for all AI assets (model registries, lineage, audit trails).
• Oversee red-teaming, stress testing against prompt injection, model extraction, and data poisoning.
• Embed security into LLMOps/DevSecOps pipelines for "Secure by Design" agentic systems.
• Ensure RAG/fine-tuning workflows prevent PII leakage and client data cross-contamination.
• Implement protocols to discover and govern shadow AI across business units.
• Drive 100% compliance with EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, and US state laws (e.g., Colorado AI Act).
• Mandate bias detection/mitigation and algorithmic fairness protocols.
• Enforce Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) requirements for high-stakes AI operations.
• Support client negotiations with transparency on AI data protection.
• Partner with Business Units to RAI-enable workflows without bypassing risk guardrails.
• Vet foundation model providers (OpenAI, Anthropic) and open-source libraries.
• Ensure AI systems align with EXL’s cloud, data governance, and platform strategies.
• Oversee policy adherence via audits, dashboards, and compliance reviews.
• Lead enterprise training and culture-building for responsible AI.
• Build/mentor a team of AI governance leads, ethicists, and security experts.

Required:

• 15 years in technical, legal, or risk leadership; 5+ years dedicated to AI/ML governance, security, or ethics.
• Hybrid expertise: Discuss Transformer architectures/vector DBs with engineers AND liability/indemnification with Legal.
• Deep fluency in NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, EU AI Act.
• Proven experience building "Governance-as-a-Service" in global, regulated, client-facing enterprises.
• Bachelors in CS, Data Science, Law/Ethics (technical focus); MS/PhD/JD strongly preferred.

Preferred:

• Direct experience with LLMOps, RAG security, red-teaming, shadow AI mitigation.