Technical Lead - AI

Job Summary

The AI Lead (Advisory & Strategy) advances the City’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) program by advising City leadership on high-value opportunities for AI in municipal services, communicating those opportunities through clear, decision-ready briefings and presentations, and ensuring risks are understood and managed through responsible AI governance.
As a trusted advisor, the incumbent supports informed decisions on where AI can improve service delivery, resident experience and internal efficiency—while maintaining public trust and aligning with the City’s values, accessibility commitments, privacy obligations and risk appetite.
Partner with internal delivery teams to intake and assess AI use cases and ensure initiatives follow appropriate guardrails for privacy, security, ethics, quality, accessibility and records management. Provide advisory support, governance oversight, and practical guidance on approved tools and platforms to help teams move from experimentation to scalable, supportable solutions.
Help run and build a small number of AI pilots (proofs of concept) for priority use cases by defining success measures, guiding approach and tooling, coordinating required reviews, and assessing outcomes with delivery teams before scaling.
The role also leads horizon scanning to brief leadership on where AI technology is going (including generative AI) and how the legislative and standards landscape is evolving. This includes synthesizing learnings from other Canadian municipalities and peer public-sector organizations, tracking market and vendor trends, and translating changes in policy, standards and legislation into actionable recommendations for the City.

The role operates in a hybrid work environment, with office presence required at Mississauga City Hall, 300 City Centre Drive, Mississauga.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the direction of the IT Manager, Business Intelligence, the successful candidate will:

• Advise City leadership on AI opportunities, limitations and risks, translating technical concepts into clear, decision-ready recommendations.
• Develop and deliver Council- and executive-ready presentations on City AI use cases (benefits, costs and readiness) and risks (e.g., privacy, security, bias, transparency, accessibility, records management and reputational risk), including decision points, risk summaries and recommended options for AI investment and direction.
• Monitor and synthesize trends in AI technology, vendors, standards and legislation/regulation affecting the public sector, and recommend implications and actions for the City.
• Lead AI opportunity discovery with departments by facilitating workshops, defining problem statements, assessing feasibility and value, and helping prioritize a City-wide AI roadmap.
• Lead and support AI pilots/proofs of concept for prioritized use cases (e.g., generative AI and automation) by defining hypotheses and success criteria, identifying data and tooling needs, coordinating required reviews (privacy/security/legal/accessibility/records), and documenting findings and recommendations for scale-up or stop decisions.
• Advise on and continuously improve responsible AI governance (policies, standards, controls and decision workflows), and support the intake/review process so proposed AI use cases receive appropriate privacy, security, legal, accessibility and records management review.
• Benchmark practices across Canadian municipalities and peer public-sector organizations, highlighting what works, what to avoid, and emerging operating models for scaling AI responsibly.
• Support evaluation of AI tools, platforms and vendor proposals (including generative AI capabilities), advising on fit-for-purpose, risk controls, data residency/handling, and supportability in a municipal environment.
• Provide guidance on responsible AI and compliance considerations (e.g., privacy and access legislation, applicable provincial/federal requirements), coordinating with Legal, Privacy, Security and Records Management as needed.
• Maintain awareness of relevant frameworks and standards (e.g., NIST AI Risk Management Framework, ISO/IEC 42001) and help incorporate appropriate practices into City policies and guidance.
• Develop and maintain AI risk and control guidance (e.g., acceptable use, human oversight, documentation expectations, evaluation/monitoring requirements) and support ongoing oversight of adopted AI solutions.
• Work with departments, IT delivery teams and external partners to translate business needs into well-defined requirements and ensure initiatives are positioned for successful delivery, adoption and change management.
• Enable AI literacy by developing guidance, FAQs and learning materials, and presenting updates on emerging capabilities, policies and safe-use practices.

Skills and Qualifications

• University degree in Public Policy, Business, Information Management, Computer Science, or a related field; a graduate degree (M.Eng, P.Eng, or MSc) is preferred.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in AI and digital transformation.
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills to explain complex AI concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to facilitate cross-functional discussions, navigate competing priorities, and build consensus among technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Working knowledge of developing AI/GenAI solutions (use-case framing, prompt design, evaluation, human-in-the-loop review, risk assessment and monitoring), and the ability to translate this into practical, repeatable approaches.
• Strong understanding of responsible AI governance and municipal/public-sector considerations, including privacy, security, accessibility and records management.
• Familiarity with relevant laws, standards and guidance (e.g., Ontario/Canadian privacy and access legislation, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001) and the ability to translate requirements into practical municipal guidance.
• Credentials in privacy, risk, governance, change management, or public-sector digital leadership (e.g., IAPP, ITIL, Prosci, Lean/Six Sigma) are an asset.
• Strong analytical skills to assess value, risk, readiness and measurement (benefits, costs and KPIs) for proposed AI use cases.
• Advanced credentials in AI governance, responsible AI, privacy, or public-sector technology strategy (including university-level AI governance programs) are highly desirable and considered a significant asset.
• Familiarity with cloud and enterprise AI platforms and tooling (e.g., Azure AI services/Azure OpenAI where available, Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem, low-code automation such as Power Platform) to support rapid prototyping.
• Ability to work with data to support pilots, including basic data profiling/quality assessment, understanding structured vs. unstructured data, and comfort interpreting results and metrics.
• Technical fluency with analytics and engineering concepts (APIs, authentication, environments, data access controls); familiarity with SQL and/or Python is an asset.
• Understanding of model/pilot lifecycle concepts (documentation, versioning, testing, rollout and support handoff); familiarity with MLOps/LLMOps concepts is an asset.