The Head of AI Governance role (variant titles: Chief AI Officer, VP AI Strategy, Director of Responsible AI) is now a named operating role in 60% of Fortune 100 enterprises per Forrester's 2026 Enterprise AI Predictions, and is the strongest single predictor of an enterprise's score on Q10 of the readiness diagnostic. The role's effective shape converges on six accountabilities: cross-functional governance ownership, EU AI Act compliance posture, vendor procurement gate-keeping, deployment kill-criterion enforcement, audit-evidence substrate ownership, and internal upskilling. The role reports to the executive committee (CEO direct or CFO/COO) rather than to IT, security, or legal, because matrixed reporting into existing functions reproduces the matrixed-shared-accountability failure pattern. Compensation in 2026 ranges from $250-450K base for the Director tier, $400-700K for VP tier, and $600K-$1.2M total comp at the C-level, with significant equity components in growth-stage and tech enterprises.

Head of AI Governance role specification. 60-day review cadence given active market formation. Watches: (1) Forrester / Gartner / IDC role-tracking data revisions, (2) major-enterprise role announcements that shift compensation benchmarks (the 2026 cohort of Chief AI Officers at Fortune 50 enterprises will set the C-level compensation precedent), (3) emerging variant titles that consolidate or fragment the accountability set (Chief Responsible AI Officer, Chief AI Risk Officer, AI Governance Committee Chair are early variants), (4) regulatory frameworks (EU AI Act Article 14 human oversight, U.S. state AI laws naming-an-accountable-individual provisions) that codify or shift the role's legal exposure.