Director of AI & Automation in Indianapolis, Indiana at KennMar

ennMar is hiring a Director of AI & Automation, you will bridge the gap between advanced technology and hands-on business operations. Initially hired on a contract basis with a clear path to a permanent role, you will be responsible for identifying, developing, and deploying AI-driven tools. Your primary focus will be enhancing our real estate and construction divisions—specifically targeting estimating accuracy, sales lead generation, revenue growth, and labor productivity. Additionally, you will scale these initiatives to optimize our electrical, plumbing, and retail hardware entities.

Key Responsibilities

• Assessment: Assess our various business to identify AI opportunities and work with leadership to prioritize initiatives
• Estimating & Bidding Automation: Develop or implement AI models to analyze blueprints, historical data, and material costs to generate rapid, highly accurate project estimates for construction, plumbing, and electrical jobs.
• Data Architecture:develop and execute the enterprise data strategy by establishing scalable data architecture, governance standards, and integration roadmaps that enable AI adoption, advanced analytics, and data-driven decision making across the organization.
• Sales & Lead Generation: Build automated AI pipelines to identify, score, and nurture sales leads across real estate, trade services, and retail business lines.
• Revenue Optimization: Deploy dynamic pricing models, predictive demand tools, and automated upselling frameworks to maximize profitability in our service and retail hardware sectors.
• Productivity & Workflow Enhancement: Identify operational bottlenecks and implement AI assistants, automated scheduling, and field-tech dispatch optimization to increase daily output.
• Cross-Entity Integration: Audit the unique workflows of our electric company, plumbing company, and retail hardware stores to introduce tailored AI solutions, such as intelligent inventory management for retail or predictive maintenance tools for trades.
• Training & Adoption: Act as the internal evangelist, training project managers, estimators, field technicians, and retail staff on how to effectively utilize new AI tools.

Required Qualifications

• Proven experience as an AI Consultant, Solutions Architect, or AI Product Manager, preferably within construction, real estate, field services, or retail environments.
• Hands-on expertise in deploying generative AI, large language models (LLMs), predictive analytics, and machine learning models to solve tangible business problems.
• Strong proficiency with automation and integration platforms (e.g., Zapier, Make, custom APIs) to connect disparate legacy software.
• Demonstrated ability to build, text, and iterate on AI tools that directly impact financial KPIs (revenue, margin, time savings).
• Excellent communication and consulting skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into actionable strategies for non-technical stakeholders and field workers.
• Strong project management skills and an entrepreneurial mindset capable of managing multiple projects simultaneously across different industries.

Preferred Experience

• Experience with specialized construction estimating software or retail inventory management systems.
• Background in developing custom internal AI tools, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications, or fine-tuning models for industry-specific data.