Director of Global Data & AI

DESCRIPTION

Rekor Systems (NASDAQ: REKR) is the global authority in Roadside Intelligence. We fuse computer vision, connected vehicles, and third-party mobility data into real-time insights that make transportation safer, smarter, and more efficient. Our customers include public safety agencies, urban planners, toll operators, and traffic management centers around the world.

Role Overview

As Director of Data & AI, you’ll own Rekor’s central data organization consisting of three high impact teams (Data Engineering, Data Science, ML/Computer Vision). You’ll set the strategy, drive execution, and ensure our data pipelines and AI models deliver world-class, low-latency insights. You’ll partner with software and hardware engineering, product, sales, and external partners to expand Rekor’s data and vision capabilities and maintain our leadership in roadside intelligence. You’ll ensure that data and AI efforts are aligned with product goals and contribute to broader company impact, from customer value to operational efficiency.

Key Responsibilities

Lead & Mentor: Manage and grow three teams (~ 20 engineers & scientists) across multiple locations (Israel, US, Europe).
Strategic Roadmap: Define and prioritize quarterly roadmap in collaboration with Product and Executive Leadership.
Cross - Functional Alignment: Collaborate with software, hardware, and partner teams to integrate data pipelines and deploy AI models.
Stakeholder Communication: Serve as the primary voice of Data & AI - presenting roadmaps, vision, metrics, and outcomes to executives and external partners.
Drive state of the art computer vision research and productization.
Architecture & Scalability: Ensure data platforms (batch and streaming) are secure, reliable, and scalable - leveraging AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, etc.
Data Governance & Security: Ensure high standards for data quality, privacy, and compliance practices across all pipelines and models.

REQUIREMENTS
Proven Leadership: 8+ years in data/AI roles, with 3 years managing multi - disciplinary teams.
Strong Communicator: Exceptional ability to translate complex technical work into clear, business-focused updates for all audiences.
Cross - Functional Collaboration: Track record working closely with Product, Software, Hardware, and Sales to deliver integrated solutions.
Model Lifecycle Management: Expertise in MLOps practices - CI/CD for models, feature stores
Educational Background: BS/MS in CS, Engineering, Data Science or related field (PhD a plus).
Partner with Product and the CTO to define and track KPIs and ROI for Data & AI efforts, ensuring technical work drives measurable business impact.
Beneficial Technical Expertise:
Data Engineering: Streaming/batch pipelines (Airflow, Kafka, Spark).
Machine Learning: TensorFlow or PyTorch; Custom architecture design for object detection, classification, and inference optimization.
Cloud Platforms: AWS (SageMaker, Glue, EMR), Kubernetes, IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation).

Nice to Have

Domain experience in transportation, smart cities, or IoT
Publications or patents in ML/computer vision
Familiarity with quantization and acceleration on embedded devices (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson, Coral TPU)
Familiarity with advanced feature store technologies or realtime inference platforms

Job Location:

Tel-Aviv, Israel

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