The Director, AI and Risk Governance is responsible for designing, operationalizing, and scaling an enterprise-grade governance framework that ensures the responsible, secure, and high-performing use of data and AI across the organization.
This role owns the end-to-end governance model spanning data, machine learning, generative AI, and agentic systems, balancing speed of innovation with risk management, compliance, and platform standardization.
Operating within a federated model and centralized guardrails, this leader will partner across AIDA, GETS, Cybersecurity, Legal, Brands, and Product teams to embed governance directly into platforms, workflows, and AI lifecycles, ensuring governance is built-in, not bolted on.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
• Define and evolve enterprise AI Risk and Governance strategy aligned to business outcomes.
• Operationalize a federated governance model with centralized standards and decentralized execution.
• Establish clear decision rights for AI use cases, model deployment, and data usage.
• Own the AI Governance lifecycle including intake, risk tiering, validation, deployment, monitoring, and decommissioning.
• Ensure governance consistency across ML, GenAI, agents, and third-party tools.
• Establish data governance frameworks: ownership, classification, quality, lineage, and compliance.
• Partner with Cyber and Legal on privacy and regulatory adherence.
• Chair and/or participate in key governance forums (Council, Review Board, Architecture Committees) and ensure effective escalation.
• Define and enforce Responsible AI standards including bias, explainability, and control mechanisms.
• Develop and oversee model and agent registry, ensuring lineage, versioning, and performance tracking.
• Embed governance into platforms and pipelines; automate controls and monitoring.
• Define KPIs and ensure governance aligns to measurable business outcomes.
• Support and help drive adoption through enablement, training, and cultural change.
QUALIFICATIONS
Salary range: $218,600 - $273,100 + eligible bonus + comprehensive benefits
Yum! Brands, Inc., based in Louisville, Kentucky, and its subsidiaries franchise or operate a system of over 60,000 restaurants in more than 155 countries and territories under the Company’s concepts – KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and the Habit Burger Grill. The Company's KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut brands are global leaders of the chicken, Mexican-style food, and pizza categories, respectively. The Habit Burger Grill is a fast casual restaurant concept specializing in made-to-order chargrilled burgers, sandwiches and more.
What makes Yum! a great place to work? It's our people. As the world's largest restaurant company, we invest in people capability so that our global workforce can make the most of their careers. With ongoing opportunities for personal and professional success, we've built a culture that rewards and recognizes great effort while providing the flexibility that is so important to all of us.
