Director of AI

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Take charge of the AI technology strategy, architecture, and execution for a small, highly specialized startup.

• Report directly to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

• Develop, launch, and scale applied AI solutions in a company where these efforts are crucial to product success.

• Define and implement the technical AI roadmap.

• Achieve technical, product, and operational results that are closely aligned with the company's objectives.

• Recruit, mentor, and oversee a small team of senior generative AI engineers.

• Collaborate closely with Product Management and Project Management teams.

• Lead the architecture and implementation of core AI systems, including: LLM-based workflows, RAG systems, AI agents, evaluation and testing systems, observability and performance monitoring, model selection and routing, and data ingestion and retrieval systems.

• Manage significant portions of the company's data ingestion pipeline into platform storage and analytics systems.

• Create infrastructure to host LLMs in the company’s new data center.

• Establish robust experimentation and measurement practices for AI features.

• Act as an internal champion for the effective utilization of AI agents within the engineering organization.

⛳️ Requirements

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, machine learning, AI, or related technical fields.

• Significant prior experience in engineering management.

• Demonstrated success in building and deploying production AI/ML systems.

• Strong practical expertise with modern AI systems, particularly in areas such as: LLMs, generative AI applications, RAG agents, model evaluation, observability, data pipelines/ETL, vector, graph, and relational data systems.

• Experience in selecting, integrating, and managing external AI vendors and services with financial accountability.

• Proven experience in evaluating and deploying open-source models in production or near-production settings.

• Strong system design acumen with the ability to fluidly transition between architecture, implementation, and operational execution.

• Comfortable working in an early-stage, pre-revenue startup where agility, ownership, and technical judgment are essential.

• Capability to lead senior engineers while remaining actively engaged in design and execution.

🏝️ Benefits

• AI is central to our product capabilities.

• A hands-on leadership role.

• An opportunity to influence the technical direction of the company.

• Close collaboration with Product Management and Project Management teams.