Department Manager, Agentic AI Platform Development

Overview

The Department Manager, Agentic AI Platform Development, owns the enterprise strategy, governance, and delivery of agentic AI capabilities on Google Vertex AI for Con Edison. This role ensures the organization can design, build, deploy, and operate intelligent agents that support grid operations, asset management, forecasting, customer engagement, and operational automation. The position is accountable for the full agentic development lifecycle, including architecture standards, agent frameworks, prompt and policy management, tool orchestration, runtime execution, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Vertex AI is established and maintained as the standardized, utility grade platform for both human in the loop and semi-autonomous agents operating in safety critical environments.Operating in a highly regulated utility context, the role ensures all agentic systems are secure, explainable, auditable, and reliable, with strict controls for determinism, fallback behavior, traceability, and human override. The Department Manager serves as the primary authority for agentic architecture and development patterns, coordinating closely with Cybersecurity, Legal, Risk, Compliance, and IT Infrastructure teams. In addition to technical leadership, the role provides financial and operational stewardship of the agentic platform, balancing innovation with non-negotiable requirements for reliability and regulatory compliance. As a senior leader in Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI, the position translates business and operational needs into scalable agentic capabilities and communicates platform maturity, risk posture, and value to executive leadership.

- Own the enterprise agentic AI development strategy on Google Vertex AI aligned with Con Edisons grid modernization and reliability objectives

- Establish standardized agent design and development patterns, including task decomposition, tool use, memory, coordination, and escalation logic

- Define and govern agent orchestration frameworks, including multi-agent collaboration, workflow control, and human-in-the-loop integration

- Provide leadership and performance management for agentic platform and engineering leads

- Set and enforce agent development standards, including prompt design, policy enforcement, versioning, testing, and release management

- Ensure runtime controls for agent behavior, including guardrails, fallback mechanisms, confidence thresholds, and kill-switch capabilities

- Maintain governance over agent decisions, actions, and tool invocations, ensuring full traceability, auditability, and explainability

- Oversee integration of agents with enterprise systems, operational technologies, and data platforms in a secure and resilient manner

- Partner with Cybersecurity, Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams to ensure agentic development complies with regulatory, privacy, and critical-infrastructure requirements

- Manage Vertex AI environments, agent execution workloads, and cloud consumption tied to agent development and runtime operations

- Enable safe deployment of agentic use cases, including operational decision support, workflow automation, and intelligent assistance

- Act as the primary interface to business and operational stakeholders for agentic capability prioritization and delivery

- Provide executive-level reporting on agent development maturity, operational readiness, risk posture, adoption, and realized value

- Lead and develop a team of managers through coaching, performance management, and effective work assignment to drive aligned execution and business outcomes

Qualifications

Required Education/Experience

- Master's Degree and a minimum of 6 years full-time relevant work experience or

- Bachelor's Degree and a minimum of 8 years full-time relevant work experience.

Preferred Education/Experience

- Master's Degree in Business Administration, Finance, Accounting, Management Information Systems, Information Systems, related business or technology aligned field and a minimum of 6 years full-time relevant work experience.

Relevant Work Experience

- Demonstrated experience delivering enterprise scale agentic AI platforms on Google Vertex AI, including establishing standardized architectures, development patterns, and operating models, preferred

- Proven ownership of the full agentic AI development lifecycle, from architecture design and agent frameworks to prompt and policy management, tool orchestration, runtime execution, monitoring, and continuous improvement, preferred

- Hands on experience designing, deploying, and operating human in-the-loop and semi-autonomous intelligent agents in safety critical and highly regulated environments, preferred

- Strong background defining and enforcing architecture standards for reliability, determinism, fallback behavior, traceability, explainability, and human override in AI driven systems, preferred

- Experience serving as the primary technical authority for agentic AI architecture, guiding engineering teams on best practices, patterns, and risk mitigation strategies, preferred

- Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with Cybersecurity, Legal, Risk, Compliance, and IT Infrastructure teams to ensure AI solutions meet security, privacy, and regulatory requirements, preferred

- Experience implementing secure, auditable AI platforms, including access controls, policy enforcement, logging, monitoring, and incident response capabilities, preferred

- Proven track record translating complex business and operational needs, such as grid operations, asset management, forecasting, customer engagement, and automation, into scalable AI solutions, preferred

- Experience providing financial and operational stewardship for AI platforms, including budget management, cost optimization, vendor oversight, and capacity planning, preferred

- Ability to communicate AI platform maturity, risk posture, and business value to executive leadership, supporting enterprise level decision making and long-term AI strategy, preferred

Skills and Abilities

- Builds and manages effective teams

- Strong written and verbal communication skills

- Demonstrates excellent judgment and decision making skills

- Demonstrates a high level of accuracy, even under pressure

Licenses and Certifications

- Driver's License Required

- Project Management Professional (PMP) Preferred

- Other: Certified Project Management (CPM) Preferred

- Other: Databricks Professional Certification Preferred

- Other: GCP Professional Certification Preferred

Physical Demands

- Sit or stand to use a keyboard, mouse, and computer for the duration of the workday

Additional Physical Demands

- The selected candidate will be assigned a System Emergency Assignment (i.e., an emergency response role) and will be expected to work non-business hours during emergencies, which may include nights, weekends, and holidays.

- Ability to respond to emergencies during off-hours