AI Enablement Lead - Institutional Equities and Research

About the Role:

We are seeking an AI Enablement Lead to directly drive the practical application of AI across our Institutional Equities and Research (IER) business. This role is focused on hands-on identification, prototyping, and delivery of high-impact AI use cases that improve how work gets done across Equity Research, Institutional Sales, Institutional Trading, and Corporate Access.

Working closely with IER technology product management, business leaders, end users, and IT partners, this individual will translate opportunities into working solutions that deliver measurable results. Success in this role will come from getting embedded with the business and personally using AI technologies to build, test, and scale real use cases that create visible value and generate pull across the platform.

The role requires balancing experimentation with focus, ensuring efforts translate into practical outcomes that drive productivity, insight, and revenue. This role is highly collaborative and in-person, requiring regular engagement with teams across Research, Sales, and Trading. The individual will report to the Head of Global Equities and is based in our downtown Milwaukee office.

Baird is an employee-owned firm with a long-standing culture of collaboration, partnership, and long-term thinking. That model allows us to move quickly, work directly across teams, and focus on building solutions that are practical, trusted, and actually used.

The Impact You’ll Make:

• Hands-On AI Enablement & Delivery
  • Work directly with Equity Research, Institutional Sales, Trading, and Corporate Access teams to identify, build, test, and scale high-impact AI use cases
  • Personally prototype and deliver solutions using M365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, ChatGPT, Claude, and agent-based AI frameworks
• Practical AI Application & Fluency
  • Apply generative and agentic AI to real workflows, including research production, content creation, client insights, idea generation, and decision support
  • Translate AI capabilities and limitations into clear, actionable business value for end users and leaders
• Education, Enablement & Adoption
  • Embed with teams to understand how work gets done, surface opportunities, and drive adoption through delivered solutions
  • Act as a hands-on resource for teams applying AI to their day-to-day work
• AI Solution Delivery & Execution
  • Rapidly test ideas, gather feedback, iterate, and scale successful use cases in partnership with technology teams
  • Maintain focus and prioritization to ensure efforts drive measurable productivity, revenue, and adoption outcomes
• Strategic Leadership & Vision
  • Set and communicate a clear, practical vision for how AI is applied across IER, grounded in real workflows and business priorities
  • Continuously explore emerging AI capabilities and identify the highest-impact opportunities across Research, Sales, Trading, and Corporate Access

What You’ll Bring to Baird:

• 3–7 years of professional experience, including hands-on application of AI in a business environment
• Demonstrated experience building, prototyping, or implementing AI-enabled solutions used in real workflows in a professional setting
• Strong working knowledge of generative AI, agentic concepts, and enterprise AI tools (e.g., M365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, ChatGPT, Claude)
• High degree of curiosity and motivation to continuously explore new AI capabilities and practical applications
• Comfort experimenting, iterating, and learning by doing rather than operating only at a conceptual level
• Experience in equity research, institutional sales, trading, or a related financial domain preferred, or the ability to quickly learn complex workflows
• Proven ability to work directly with end users to deliver practical, high-impact solutions
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to engage technical and non-technical audiences
• Bias toward action, ownership, and delivering tangible results
• Passion for applying AI to solve real business problems and improve how work gets done
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field required

Why This Role:

This is a unique opportunity to sit at the intersection of AI and the front lines of the Institutional Equities business with direct access to senior leaders and end users. You will be expected to turn ideas into working solutions that are used day-to-day across Research, Sales, and Trading.

This is not a role focused on writing strategy documents or advising from the sidelines. You will be building, testing, and scaling solutions that directly impact how work gets done.

You will have the autonomy to experiment and the expectation to deliver real solutions that drive revenue and efficiency.  Success will come from creating solutions that people actively choose to use, not from mandates or top-down direction.

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Baird is committed to diversity and provides employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, citizenship, national origin, age, disability, military service, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, or any other status protected by law.