Industry Solution Leader - Heavy Industrial (Integrated Steel Optimization and Asset Performance)
About this role
The C3 AI team builds enterprise AI applications and platforms designed to drive digital transformation across global organizations, focusing here on heavy industrial solutions. This role centers on leading the design and delivery of specialized enterprise AI solutions for clients within the integrated steel optimization and asset performance sectors. Operating as both a senior domain expert and solution leader, the person in this position will work directly with customer engineering, operations, and executive teams while guiding internal data scientists and engineers.
This role exists to bridge complex heavy industrial operations with tractable AI and machine learning architectures, ensuring that technical deployments yield measurable business outcomes. An ideal candidate brings substantial hands-on experience in manufacturing, reliability, or plant operations, alongside the technical judgment required to navigate steel mill processes such as blast furnaces and rolling operations. Professionals who thrive here enjoy translating ambiguous industrial problems into structured technical strategies while leading cross-functional teams toward production scale.
What you will do
- Own the overall solution strategy, technical direction, and delivery outcomes for assigned customer engagements from initial problem definition through production deployment and scale.
- Serve as the primary customer-facing solution leader and domain expert, developing a detailed understanding of customer operations, equipment, processes, constraints, and business objectives.
- Identify and quantify high-impact business opportunities across equipment reliability, maintenance, production performance, process optimization, throughput, yield, quality, energy efficiency, and operating economics.
- Translate complex engineering and operational challenges into tractable AI, machine learning, optimization, and software problems with clearly defined requirements and success criteria.
- Lead cross-functional teams of forward-deployed engineers, data scientists, product managers, and industry experts, establishing technical priorities and driving alignment.
- Work directly with customer engineers, operators, reliability teams, maintenance organizations, and executives to validate requirements, solution performance, and business impact.
- Guide the interpretation and use of industrial data, including process signals, equipment attributes, operating states, maintenance history, and production information.
- Maintain accountability for solution quality, business value, technical risks, delivery progress, customer adoption, and executive communication throughout the engagement.
What you need
- Hold a Bachelor's degree in Engineering or a related technical discipline, with preferred backgrounds in mechanical, chemical, electrical, industrial, metallurgical, or materials engineering.
- Bring at least 7 years of experience in engineering, manufacturing, operations, reliability, maintenance, industrial technology, or technically focused consulting.
- Demonstrate deep experience in asset-intensive industries such as steel and metals, heavy manufacturing, mining, or utilities.
- Possess a strong understanding of industrial equipment, manufacturing processes, process controls, maintenance practices, and operational workflows.
- Have experience working with industrial data including sensor and time-series data, equipment states, alarms, maintenance history, and quality information.
- Demonstrate the ability to reason from engineering fundamentals and determine whether analytical and AI-driven recommendations are physically and operationally credible.
- Show demonstrated experience leading complex, customer-facing technical engagements and working directly with engineering, operational, and executive stakeholders.
Nice to have
- Experience delivering AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, optimization, predictive maintenance, condition monitoring, process optimization, or industrial digital transformation solutions.
- Hands-on technical experience working with industrial data, SQL, Python, analytics tools, application configuration, scripting, or similar technologies.
- Experience with rotating equipment, electrical equipment, production equipment, manufacturing lines, process units, or other complex industrial systems.
- Experience taking technical solutions from initial proof of value through production deployment and scale.
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the salary range for this position?
The salary range for this role is $130,000 to $203,000 USD.
What kind of travel is required for the role?
The position requires the ability to travel to customer locations as required.
What specific industry background is needed for this role?
The ideal candidate should have hands-on experience working in an integrated steel mill, with direct exposure across BF, BOF/BOP, caster, HSM, and/or cold rolling/finishing operations.
What teams will this leader work with internally?
This role works directly with C3 AI forward deployed engineers, data scientists, product teams, and other technical resources to deliver measurable business outcomes.