DESCRIPTION

The Chief Scientist-Technical Artificial Intelligence, serves as a global thought leader and hands-on innovator across the enterprise. This role is responsible for translating emerging AI research and trends from academia, national laboratories, and industry into practical, high‑impact applications. The role also partners closely with internal teams and external software vendors to support negotiations, co‑innovate solutions, and guide adoption of advanced AI technologies.

The Chief Scientist addresses a wide range of technical and process challenges across Product Development, Training and Upskilling, Software Solution Development, and end‑to‑end operational processes such as Product Problem Solving, Uptime, and Quality Engineering. As an enterprise-level individual contributor, this role drives the creation of new AI agents, tools, and applications; defines requirements for third‑party builds; and establishes roadmaps for key technical capabilities.

Given the rapid advancements in Generative AI, the role will lead significant changes to existing procedures and establish entirely new workflows across procurement, training, cybersecurity, data privacy, and product development. This role is preferably based in Indiana, but remote arrangements are possible. The role operates globally, with particular focus on North America, China, and Europe.

In this role, you will make an impact in the following ways:

• Serve as the enterprise’s senior technical authority for generative and agentic AI, setting the standard for technical rigor and shaping how the Technical Function understands, evaluates, and applies advanced AI capabilities.
• Define and evolve AI principles, reference architectures, and technical standards that guide safe, scalable, and robust AI adoption across complex industrial engineering environments and influence long-term technology strategy.
• Translate frontier AI research into practical, actionable guidance, identifying emerging methods and design patterns and ensuring Cummins remains on the leading edge of innovation.
• Drive and accelerate high-value engineering use cases by advising teams on applying LLMs, RAG, and agent-based systems, improving decision quality, and enabling new technical workflows.
• Evaluate and validate AI model performance and risks through stress-testing, failure‑mode analysis, and domain-expert collaboration to ensure outputs are explainable, traceable, and decision-supportive.
• Build organizational capability and ensure responsible scaling by coaching practitioners, raising AI literacy, and providing senior oversight for pilots and early deployments to clarify where AI adds value—and where human judgment remains essential.

RESPONSIBILITIES

To be successful in this role you will need the following:

• Expert-level mastery of generative AI—including LLMs, RAG architectures, and agentic AI frameworks—to serve as the company’s primary technical authority and advisor.
• Strong communication and teaching skills to translate complex AI concepts into clear, actionable understanding for engineers, senior leaders and cross‑functional teams.
• Ability to shape enterprise AI strategy by influencing technical standards, advising leadership on risks and tradeoffs, and guiding mid‑ to long‑term adoption across Business Units.
• Depth in agentic AI design to define patterns, curate reusable frameworks, and determine when agentic vs. traditional analytic approaches are most appropriate.
• Leadership in validation and responsible AI practices—including stress-testing, hallucination mitigation, misuse risk assessment, and championing principled, domain-informed approaches.
• Strong external presence and credibility to help establish Cummins’ reputation in the AI space while operating as an enterprise-scale individual contributor who influences through expertise.

QUALIFICATIONS

Education/Experience

• Advanced academic or technical foundation in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field (or equivalent industry experience), enabling rigorous understanding of AI methods in industrial contexts.
• Hands-on mastery of modern AI toolchains and ecosystem technologies, including model evaluation techniques, long‑context handling, multi-step reasoning workflows, and infrastructure supporting agentic systems.
• Proficiency in designing AI validation, stress‑testing, and risk‑assessment frameworks, with the ability to assess hallucination risks, misuse scenarios, and model reliability in engineering‑critical environments.
• Strong ability to collaborate with diverse domain experts—engineering, product, software, operations—to ensure AI outputs are grounded, explainable, and aligned with real-world technical constraints.
• Experience developing new AI-driven products, applications, or workflows, including scoping requirements, co-innovating with vendors, and contributing to enterprise-wide tools, kits, and system roadmaps.

Compensation

Please note that the salary range provided is a good faith estimate on the applicable range. The final salary offer will be determined after considering relevant factors, including a candidate’s qualifications and experience, where appropriate.

Job Systems/Information Technology

Organization Cummins Inc.

Role Category Off-site Remote

Job Type Exempt - Experienced

Min Salary $138000

Max Salary $230000

ReqID 2425277

Relocation Package No

100% On-Site No

Cummins and E-Verify

At Cummins, we are an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer dedicated to diversity in the workplace. Our policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified persons without regard to race, gender, color, disability, national origin, age, religion, union affiliation, sexual orientation, veteran status, citizenship, gender identity and/or expression, or other status protected by law. Cummins validates the right to work using E-Verify and will provide the Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization. Visit http://EEOC.gov to know your rights on workplace discrimination.