Manager Technology AI Ops/Support

About the role

Department: Technology Our Company Promise We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer. Job Description: As Manager Technology supporting Southwest's AI Operations & Support Pod, you'll lead the Pod responsible for ensuring AI and agentic systems run reliably and deliver measurable value in production environments. This will stand up and lead a new AI Ops organization that defines how AI systems are supported, monitored , and continuously improved at scale. You'll establish service level standards, on ‑ call models, and a follow ‑ the ‑ sun support framework across global Teams, while driving strong outcomes in reliability, incident response, and operational efficiency. Partnering closely with Engineering, Platform, and Product Teams, you'll help connect operations and development-ensuring issues are resolved quickly and translated into long ‑ term improvements that reduce repeat incidents. With a focus on AWS ‑ based systems, observability, and evolving AI/ML technologies, you'll guide your Pod to balance speed, stability, and cost as AI adoption grows. This role offers the opportunity to build and grow a high ‑ performing team while shaping how Southwest supports and scales AI capabilities across the enterprise. Model the Southwest Way Guide and lead team members using SWA talent management practices to coach, develop, and engage employees Adhere to Company values and competencies to foster a culture of inclusion, recognition, and support of a safe work environment Invest in leadership and self-growth through participating in continuous learning and development Responsibilities Lead, support, and influence the achievement of the mission, goals and objectives of the department and organization Participate fully in organizational processes and initiatives, i.e. performance management, interviewing, budgeting, training, etc. Lead the resolution of organization, team and individual issues, making appropriate decision Develop and execute strategies and processes to improve performance and the value of products and services provided Lead cross-functional Teams to deliver solutions and services to meet enterprise needs Provide Technical thought Leadership related to assigned functional areas Deliver technology solutions using best practices to achieve maximum Team productivity while delivering high quality products Stay abreast of emerging trends, processes, and solutions related to assigned responsibilities Build strong, collaborative relationships and credibility while influencing and driving change across respective Business and Technology Teams Work with Technology and business partners to measure financial benefits and demonstrable business value May perform other job duties as directed by Employee's Leaders Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Knowledge of business/Leadership principals, including planning, organizing, directing, developing, and supervising Knowledge of personnel practices and regulations Knowledge of software development practices, concepts, methodologies, tools and trends Proficient knowledge of project management methodologies Skilled in excellent partnering, negotiation and communication in order to facilitate interactions with business Customers and technology teams Ability to provide tactical leadership for Team(s) Ability to use appropriate motivation and influence techniques to achieve desired Team results Ability to set and manage stakeholder expectations Ability to deliver quality projects on time and within budget Ability to manage projects using the organization's project management methodology Education Required: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information systems or similar fields of study or equivalent advanced level experience Experience Required: Demonstrated experience in directly or indirectly leading team(s) Fully functioning, broad knowledge in: Business and/or Information Technology environment Leading teams and providing work direction 8-12 years relevant work-related / leadership experience ⁠ 3+ years of People leadership of agentic/AI/SWE teams of 8+ 3+ years of Delivery ownership for AI/ML or agentic products in production 3+ years of Technical depth in modern AI stack (LLMs, agentic frameworks, AWS) 3+ years of Hiring and growing AI/SWE engineers in a competitive market 5+ years of Agile delivery at scale-Scrum/SAFe, roadmap, dependency mgmt Preferred: ⁠ Prior GIC/captive build-out or pod stand-up Airline/travel/large enterprise IT exposure Vendor management & FinOps for AI workloads Public thought leadership in AI/agentic (talks, blogs, OSS) Driving back-office/ETO automation programs