Applied AI Specialist

Business Area: Corp. Strategy Seniority Level: Mid-Senior level Job Description: At Cloudera , we empower people to transform complex data into clear and actionable insights. With as much data under management as the hyperscalers, we're the preferred data partner for the top companies in almost every industry. Powered by the relentless innovation of the open source community, Cloudera advances digital transformation for the world’s largest enterprises. The Applied AI team exists to help the world's largest enterprises move beyond AI experimentation and into production. Our mission is to identify, validate, and accelerate high-impact AI use cases that deliver measurable business outcomes across regulated and data-intensive industries. Working at the intersection of industry expertise, AI technology, and enterprise data platforms, we partner directly with customers to solve complex business challenges using machine learning, computer vision, predictive analytics, generative AI, and agentic systems, while developing the technical conviction needed to move initiatives from concept to production. The team combines Applied AI Specialists, strategic ecosystem partners such as NVIDIA, and Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) in a unified operating model designed to rapidly move AI initiatives from discovery to deployment. Applied AI Specialists work directly with customers to discover opportunities, validate technical feasibility, and establish technical conviction, while FDE teams build and deploy qualified solutions. Together, we help organizations operationalize AI securely, govern it responsibly, and scale it across the enterprise. About the Role As an Applied AI Specialist, your mission is to identify, validate, and establish technical conviction around high-impact private AI use cases that can be successfully deployed into production. Operating within a specialized regional pod, you will lead technical discovery, execute deep-dive AI workshops, and collaborate closely with strategic ecosystem partners such as NVIDIA. You will work directly with enterprise architects, data scientists, platform teams, and business stakeholders to evaluate AI opportunities, assess technical feasibility, and define clear implementation paths. Your focus is on separating low-conviction ideas from production-ready opportunities, ensuring that only the highest-value use cases advance into our engineering pipeline. As an Applied AI Specialist, you will: - Lead AI Discovery Workshops - Partner with strategic ecosystem providers, including NVIDIA, to design and facilitate highly technical hands-on workshops that identify, validate, and prioritize private AI opportunities. - Discover and Scope High-Value Use Cases - Conduct deep technical and business discovery with enterprise customers to identify AI workloads that can deliver measurable business outcomes and are suitable for production deployment. - Evaluate Enterprise AI Readiness - Assess data architecture, governance requirements, infrastructure constraints, security considerations, and data gravity challenges to determine the feasibility of Private AI deployments. - Develop Regional Domain Leadership - Serve as a subject matter expert within your regional pod, building deep expertise in one or more strategic industries while helping transfer successful AI patterns across customer segments. - Build Technical Assets - Develop lightweight proofs of concept, reference architectures, technical demonstrations, and solution frameworks that help customers validate feasibility before committing to full-scale implementation. - Define the Engineering Blueprint - Translate qualified opportunities into clear technical requirements, data specifications, success criteria, architectural recommendations, and scoped outcomes to ensure seamless handoff to FDE teams. - Capture and Scale Best Practices - Document successful use cases, architectural patterns, and implementation frameworks that can be r