Director of Innovation

Position Summary

About Southland: As a leader in MEP building systems, we provide integrated, full lifecycle building solutions that optimize the design, construction, operation, and efficiency of buildings.

We partner with our clients and leverage the collective expertise of our people to create better-built environments where communities and businesses can thrive. Since our founding over 75 years ago, we've continued to think big to account for the whole picture. Our engineering, construction, service, and energy solutions deliver results that will work for you, your building, and your business or community.

About the Role: The Director of Innovation builds and leads Southland’s enterprise innovation capability. This leader creates a structured, repeatable path for identifying business opportunities, evaluating emerging technologies, running disciplined experiments, and scaling solutions that produce measurable value.

Working across the business and Technology & Innovation, the Director owns the innovation operating model, portfolio, governance, partnerships, and performance measures from idea intake through a decision to scale, stop, or iterate. The role will initially place significant emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI while establishing a broader model for emerging technologies and new ways of working.

Success requires balancing speed and experimentation with business accountability, cybersecurity, legal, financial, architectural, data, and operational considerations. The Director partners closely with the PMO, Change Management, Architecture, Cybersecurity, Legal, Procurement, Finance, Data & Analytics, HR, and business leaders so innovation moves quickly without creating disconnected technology, unmanaged risk, or pilots that never translate into business value.

Position Details

Build the enterprise innovation function

• Establish Southland’s enterprise innovation strategy, operating model, governance, processes, funding approach, and ways of working.

• Define roles, decision rights, investment criteria, escalation paths, standards, and guardrails that support responsible experimentation without unnecessary bureaucracy.

• Establish and manage an Innovation Steering Committee, including decision criteria, portfolio reviews, meeting cadence, and executive reporting.

• Create a practical lifecycle that moves opportunities from idea to assessment, experiment, and a clear scale, stop, or iterate decision.

Manage innovation intake and portfolio decisions

• Establish a common enterprise process for capturing, framing, and evaluating innovation opportunities.

• Partner with business leaders to define the problem, intended outcome, and accountable sponsor before selecting a technology solution.

• Evaluate opportunities based on strategic alignment, business value, feasibility, risk, investment, scalability, and organizational readiness.

• Maintain enterprise visibility into the innovation pipeline, active experiments, investments, outcomes, dependencies, and decisions.

• Identify overlapping efforts, promote reuse, and provide clear recommendations on which opportunities should advance, pause, pivot, or stop.

Lead experimentation and incubation

• Establish a disciplined approach for pilots, proofs of concept, prototypes, and other experiments.

• Require every experiment to have a defined problem, accountable sponsor, hypothesis, success measures, investment requirements, risk review, and decision date.

• Enable controlled experimentation through appropriate sandbox environments, data access, and governance mechanisms.

• Drive rapid learning cycles, maintain appropriate scope, capture lessons learned, and prevent “pilot purgatory” through explicit decisions.

Advance AI and emerging technology

• Lead the enterprise approach to evaluating and enabling Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, automation, and other emerging technologies.

• Partner with Cybersecurity, Legal, Data, HR, and other stakeholders to establish and maintain responsible-use policies, standards, and guardrails.

• Establish processes for evaluating AI use cases, approving tools, and enabling responsible experimentation.

• Monitor technology and market developments, translating trends into practical business implications rather than pursuing technology for technology’s sake.

Scale successful innovations

• Define graduation criteria for moving successful experiments into production and sustained enterprise delivery.

• Partner with the PMO to transition scaled initiatives into the enterprise portfolio for sizing, prioritization, resourcing, funding, and delivery governance.

• Partner with Change Management to assess organizational impact and establish the adoption approach for scaled solutions.

• Ensure Architecture, Cybersecurity, Legal, Procurement, Data, Finance, and other required stakeholders engage at the appropriate lifecycle points.

• Establish clear business ownership, operating support, and benefit accountability before incubation transitions into a sustained capability.

Build partnerships and innovation capability

• Build trusted relationships with corporate functions, divisions, field operations, and Technology & Innovation leaders to identify meaningful opportunities.

• Facilitate discovery sessions, workshops, and other mechanisms that help teams identify problems worth solving.

• Create accessible channels for employees and leaders to surface ideas while maintaining discipline around investment decisions.

• Build organizational innovation capability through education, communication, experimentation, and sharing of proven use cases.

• Develop relationships with technology providers, startups, industry organizations, universities, and ecosystem partners where they provide strategic value.

Measure value and performance

• Establish KPIs and executive reporting for the innovation function and portfolio.

• Define measurable success criteria before experiments begin and track performance against those measures.

• Monitor pipeline health, experiment cycle time, outcomes, adoption, value realized, reuse and scalability, risk, and investment.

• Partner with business owners to quantify benefits and validate whether scaled innovations deliver intended outcomes.

• Communicate portfolio performance, lessons learned, emerging opportunities, risks, and investment needs to leadership.

What this level looks like

• Autonomy. Operates from the CTIO strategy and enterprise priorities; sets direction for the innovation sub-function and recommends enterprise investment decisions.

• Impact. Shapes enterprise innovation, emerging-technology, risk, investment, and value outcomes across functions, divisions, and regions.

• Leadership. Builds the innovation capability, leads through influence across business and technology teams, and develops the talent and partnerships required to scale the function.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, engineering, innovation, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.

• 10+ years of progressive experience across technology, digital transformation, innovation, product management, strategy, or related disciplines.

• Demonstrated experience building or leading innovation, digital, emerging-technology, or transformation capabilities.

• Experience taking ideas from concept through experimentation and into scaled implementation.

• Strong understanding of AI, Generative AI, automation, data, and emerging-technology trends and their practical business application.

• Experience establishing governance, intake, prioritization, experimentation, and portfolio-management processes.

• Demonstrated ability to develop business cases, define measurable outcomes, evaluate investments, and communicate recommendations to executives.

• Proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries and work effectively with business and technology leaders.

• Ability to balance innovation speed with security, legal, financial, architectural, data, and operational considerations.

• Preferred qualifications

• Experience in construction, engineering, manufacturing, industrial services, or another asset- and field-intensive environment.

• Experience establishing an innovation function or operating model in a complex enterprise.

• Experience with enterprise AI and Generative AI adoption, responsible AI governance, and use-case evaluation.

• Experience managing innovation ecosystems, technology partnerships, startups, or strategic vendors.

• Experience with Agile, product management, design thinking, lean experimentation, or similar methods.

• Experience developing and managing innovation investment or funding models.

• An advanced degree or relevant innovation, product, strategy, AI, or portfolio credential is valued but not required.

• How success will be measured

• A clearly defined and adopted enterprise innovation operating model.

• A transparent innovation pipeline with clear ownership, decision rights, funding, and executive visibility.

• Faster movement from idea to evidence-based decision.

• Every experiment has a business sponsor, hypothesis, success measure, funding source, risk assessment, and decision point.

• Fewer duplicative or disconnected experiments and greater reuse of successful capabilities.

• Successful experiments transition cleanly into the enterprise delivery portfolio and sustained operations.

• Increased responsible adoption of AI and other high-value emerging technologies.

• Measurable business value from innovation investments and strong business engagement without unnecessary bureaucracy.

• This is a hybrid role that is available to candidates located near our active Southland locations/sites, including:

• Dulles, VA

• Laurel, MD

• Philadelphia, PA

• Whitehall, PA

• Austin, TX

• Houston, TX

• Carrollton, TX

• Fort Worth, TX

• Corpus Christi, TX

• San Antonio, TX

• Los Angeles/Garden Grove, CA

• San Diego, CA

• San Francisco, CA

• Sacramento, CA

• Phoenix, AZ

• Las Vegas, NV

• Saratoga Springs, UT

• Vancouver, WA

• Kennewick, WA

• Redmond, OR

Benefits

As a 100% employee-owned company, we offer a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family:

• 401(k) plan with 50% company match (no cap) and immediate 100% vesting

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (100% paid for employee)

• Annual bonus program based upon performance, achievement, and company profitability

• Term life, AD&D insurance, and voluntary life insurance

• Disability income protection insurance

• Pre-tax flexible spending plans (health and dependent care)

• Paid parental leave

• Paid holidays, vacation, and personal time

• Training/professional development opportunities and company-paid memberships for professional associations and licenses

• Wellness benefits

About Southland Industries

As one of the nation’s largest MEP companies, Southland Industries is built on the foundation of great people. Since 1949, we have put our people first, enabling growth, professional achievement, and innovation. If you want to join a fast-paced environment where you’re engaged, challenged, and valued, apply now to join our dynamic team.

To learn more about careers at Southland, explore our career opportunities (https://southlandind.foleon.com/experienced-professionals/brochure/) , follow us on social media (https://www.linkedin.com/company/22132/?trk=tyah) , and check out our website (https://southlandind.com/) .

Southland Industries and all its subsidiaries are an Equal Opportunity Employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. We are committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing our employees with a safe work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Southland Industries are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, gender, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, medical condition, marital status, family care or medical leave status, veteran status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Southland Industries will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics.

Pay: This consolidated salary range reflects the anticipated pay range across the U.S. geographic locations where this position may be based. Actual compensation will be determined based on the candidate’s primary work location, experience, qualifications, skills, and other job-related factors, consistent with applicable law.

Salary Range: $161,620.00 - $246,919.00 annually.

Contingent Employment: All employment offers are contingent upon successful drug tests, background checks, and professional reference checks. Roles that include driving as an essential job duty will be required to have a successful Motor Vehicle Record check (MVR). We are not able to offer sponsorship of employment at this time.

External Agency Announcement : Its Southland Industries' policy not to accept candidate submissions from recruiting agencies without an active and authorized work order. Candidate ownership can only be established after a bona fide work order is issued by a member of the Southland Industries Talent Acquisition team and the candidate is appropriately submitted through our Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

Required Skills

Required Experience