Website:
iimu.ac.in
Job details:
Indian Institute of Management Udaipur
About The Role
IIM Udaipur is establishing an AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) — a flagship facility built around state-of-the-art GPU compute (two units of the latest NVIDIA/AMD GPUs) to advance research, teaching, innovation and entrepreneurship in artificial intelligence.
We are seeking a dynamic senior leader to establish, operationalise and scale the CoE. As the executive head of the Centre, the person will own its strategy, operations, budget, team and external partnerships, and will drive measurable outcomes that evolve the CoE into a self-sustaining, regionally and nationally recognised AI innovation platform within a three-year timeframe. The role works in close partnership with a Faculty Coordinator who sets the academic and research direction.
Key responsibilities
Strategy and operating model
- Define and implement the CoE’s strategy, operating model and performance indicators.
- Build and execute a roadmap to evolve the CoE into a self-sufficient and recognised AI centre and innovation platform at the State and national level within three years.
- Establish and report a balanced set of outcome metrics — infrastructure utilisation, research outputs (grants, publications, projects enabled), startups supported, and revenue generated — to evidence progress toward self-sustainability.
Partnerships, revenue and external engagement
- Liaise with government agencies (central and state), industry partners, academic institutions, funding agencies and technology providers.
- Identify and pursue opportunities for sponsored research, consultancy, training, grants, industry partnerships and fee-based services.
- Represent and evangelise the CoE externally — at conferences, industry forums and with prospective partners — and organise workshops and training sessions, within and outside the Institute, to drive awareness and adoption.
Infrastructure stewardship
- Steward the CoE’s GPU and compute infrastructure, including capacity planning and prioritisation, scheduling, availability and uptime, hardware lifecycle and refresh planning, and vendor management.
- Ensure the security and integrity of high-value computing assets, and provide fair and transparent access to CoE resources across faculty, students, startups and external partners.
- Ensure high utilisation of the CoE by all stakeholders, with regular reporting on usage and impact.
Enablement and ecosystem
- Help faculty identify appropriate use cases in research, teaching and external consulting that leverage the CoE.
- Work closely with Executive Education to integrate the CoE’s capabilities into appropriate modules.
- Provide guidance and mentoring to the student community in using the capabilities of the CoE.
- Work closely with the IIMU Incubation Centre to collaborate with existing startups and facilitate incubation of new startups that leverage the CoE.
Team, budget and operations
- Build, lead and develop the CoE team — recruiting, supervising, developing and retaining technical-operations, programme and administrative staff as the Centre scales.
- Own the CoE budget, financial planning and periodic financial reporting, managing resources to achieve the three-year self-sustainability target.
Governance and responsible AI
- Develop and implement applicable data-security policies and ethical, responsible-use guidelines, in alignment with the CoE Governance Committee and Institute governance.
Qualifications
- Ph.D. or Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Data Science or a related field.
- Typically 10+ years of relevant leadership experience, ideally in academic, research or innovation-focused environments, including experience running or operating CoEs or AI labs of similar scale and nature.
- Demonstrated track record of fundraising, revenue generation, or building sponsored-research and industry partnerships.
- Demonstrated capability in successfully managing complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives.
- Experience operating in a faculty-driven, multi-stakeholder environment; strong understanding of AI technologies, applications and infrastructure (deep technical expertise is valued but does not substitute for leadership and partnership capability) is preferred.
Expected skills
- Strategic thinking and financial acumen, including budget and resource management.
- Strong leadership, team-building, stakeholder management, coordination and execution skills.
- Ability to work with a wide variety of stakeholders — faculty, students, industry, startups and government agencies — and to negotiate and build partnerships.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to represent the CoE externally.
- Commitment to the ethical and responsible use of the AI CoE.
Compensation and terms
Compensation: Commensurate with qualifications and experience; the Institute will indicate the applicable band/grade during the selection process.
Term: Contractual, three-year term. Renewal will be considered based on performance and on the CoE’s progress toward its self-sustainability and impact objectives.
Last date to apply- October 05, 2026
IIM Udaipur is an equal-opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates.
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