AI Automation and Integration Lead

The AI Automation and Integration Lead is an individual contributor and cross-functional process leader responsible for connecting enterprise data, modernizing business workflows, and delivering secure AI-enabled solutions. Working directly with the Business Development organization, IT, Security, data owners, and other business stakeholders, this role turns high-value business needs into reliable integrations, governed automations, and measurable process improvements.

The role combines enterprise integration, business process leadership, AI engineering, and security-by-design. The successful candidate will establish practical technical standards, lead discovery and prioritization, guide solutions from architecture through adoption, and remain hands-on in building APIs, connectors, data pipelines, automations, copilots, and intelligent agents.

You Will Be Accountable For:

Enterprise Data Connections and Integration

- Lead the strategy, architecture, delivery, and operational health of connections among business applications, data platforms, AI services, and external systems.

- Design and implement secure integrations using APIs, enterprise connectors, webhooks, event-based patterns, file exchanges, data pipelines, and other appropriate methods.

- Define source-to-target mappings, transformation rules, data contracts, validation controls, and error-handling standards that keep connected data accurate, complete, traceable, and recoverable.

- Partner with system owners and data stewards to clarify ownership, authoritative sources, master and reference data, retention needs, and permitted uses of information.

- Establish reusable integration patterns and technical standards for authentication, authorization, secrets, service accounts, versioning, logging, monitoring, retries, reconciliation, and support.

Process Leadership and Automation

- Lead structured discoveries with business stakeholders to document current-state processes, identify control gaps and bottlenecks, and design practical future-state workflows.

- Facilitate decisions across business, IT, Security, Legal, Compliance, and data-owner groups; make responsibilities, tradeoffs, approvals, and escalation paths explicit.

- Lead initiatives from intake and requirements through design, testing, change management, deployment, training, operational handoff, and benefits realization.

- Develop process, documentation, and solution standards that enable repeatable delivery across teams while reducing one-off tools and unmanaged workflows.

Security Governance and Responsible AI

- Evaluate integration risks and dependencies, including data sensitivity, interface limits, vendor constraints, environment boundaries, and downstream business impact.

- Embed security and privacy requirements throughout solution design, including data classification, least-privilege access, segregation of duties, encryption, secure credential handling, and appropriate retention.

- Perform solution-level risk assessments and threat modeling; document data exposure, trust boundaries, failure modes, control requirements, and residual risk before production release.

- Establish governance for AI solutions, including approved data use, grounding sources, human oversight, output validation, model and prompt change control, and monitoring for quality and misuse.

- Ensure solutions comply with company policies, contractual obligations, export-control requirements, and applicable regulatory or customer requirements.

AI and Intelligent Automation

- Identify and deliver use cases where AI, intelligent agents, and automation improve productivity, accuracy, responsiveness, or decision-making.

- Architect, prototype, build, test, deploy, and support AI-enabled solutions using Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure AI, OpenAI, Power Platform, and other approved enterprise technologies.

- Integrate AI solutions with governed enterprise data and applications while maintaining clear permissions, provenance, logging, and human review.

- Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend adoption only when the business case, security posture, support model, and operational readiness are clear.

- Measure deployed solutions for accuracy, performance, adoption, cost, control effectiveness, and business impact; improve or retire them based on evidence.

Data and Analytics

- Develop or enhance governed dashboards, reports, and analytical tools using Power BI, Excel, SQL, or similar technologies.

- Define and validate metrics, data lineage, reconciliation rules, and quality checks so decision-makers can trust reported information.

- Support data preparation and retrieval patterns for AI, automation, reporting, and operational decision-making.

Microsoft GCC High Environment

- Architect, develop, and support solutions within Microsoft GCC High and approved connected environments.

- Confirm that services, connectors, data locations, and deployment patterns are authorized for the intended data and use case before implementation.

- Partner with IT and Security on environment architecture, identity, tenant configuration, data-loss prevention, audit logging, monitoring, and troubleshooting.

- Maintain production-ready documentation for architectures, integrations, data flows, controls, operating procedures, recovery steps, and technical decisions.

Qualifications

U.S. Citizenship Required: Due to government contract and facility security requirements, this position is limited to U.S. citizens. Candidates requiring employment authorization through an EAD, visa, or other non-citizen work authorization are not eligible for consideration.

- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, Business Analytics, Information Technology, or a related field.

- Able to be onsite at our Plano or Kilgore, TX locations up to one week/month.

- 3-5 or more years of progressive experience delivering enterprise integrations, automation, business systems, data solutions, AI applications, or related technology initiatives.

- Demonstrated experience leading complex cross-functional process or technology initiatives from discovery through production support and measurable adoption.

- Hands-on experience integrating enterprise systems and data using REST or other APIs, connectors, webhooks, JSON, SQL, data pipelines, or event-driven patterns.

- Experience defining integration architecture, data mappings, error handling, reconciliation, monitoring, and operational-support models.

- Hands-on experience building or implementing AI-enabled solutions using generative AI, large language models, intelligent agents, retrieval-augmented generation, or AI automation platforms.

- Experience with Microsoft technologies such as Copilot Studio, Azure AI, Azure OpenAI, Power Automate, Power Apps, SharePoint, Power BI, or Microsoft 365.

Preferred Experience

- Professional experience designing or supporting solutions within Microsoft GCC High.

- Experience integrating CRM, ERP, collaboration, document-management, data-platform, and analytics systems.

- Experience with API management, integration platforms, ETL or ELT tooling, data gateways, message queues, or enterprise middleware.

- Experience with Python, C#, JavaScript, PowerShell, or another language used to build and support integrations and automation.

- Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol), function calling, agent tool design, or enterprise AI connectors.

- Familiarity with secure development practices, threat modeling, vulnerability management, audit evidence, incident response, and recognized security or compliance frameworks.

SHAPING THE FUTURE THROUGH INNOVATION AND DISCOVERY!

With a history spanning more than seven decades, Communications & Power Industries thousands of products have impacted peoples lives in numerous unseen ways every day. Our highly engineered products serve as the backbone of modern-day commercial and military communications systems, assist in diagnosing medical conditions, empower scientific discoveries and space exploration, and much more.

CPI is headquartered in Plano, Texas and is a global manufacturer of electronic components and subsystems. We have manufacturing locations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. With a heritage of technological excellence, our team serves customers in the communications, defense, medical, industrial, and scientific markets.

WHAT WE OFFER:

Whether you are a seasoned professional or just embarking on your career, CPI is an ideal place to expand your knowledge and expertise. We cultivate a healthy, dynamic, and team-oriented environment that empowers our employees to develop, create and deliver innovative, reliable technology solutions to power, connect, protect, and support a better tomorrow.

We offer our employees an attractive compensation package with competitive salaries and comprehensive benefits, including health and wellness programs, career development, generous retirement savings plan with company match and more!

WHO WE ARE:

We value the unique and diverse skills, qualities, and backgrounds that each employee brings to CPI, and we respect each employee as an integral member of our growing team. CPI is committed to providing equal employment opportunities for all current and prospective employees, as well as to promoting a culture of inclusion and respect for everyone. We celebrate the innovation that diversity creates in the work environment, and we recognize that each employee brings their own unique capabilities, experiences, and perspectives to the organization. It is this variety that adds value to our teams, as well as to our stakeholders. We welcome and encourage applicants to reach their full potential with us.

CPI is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability or other applicable legally protected characteristics.