Director, Applied AI

Metropolis Metropolis · Vertical AI · New York, NY +1 · Engineering Strategy & Operations

Lead a newly formed Applied AI organization, architecting an AI-first operating model, and identifying high-leverage opportunities to rebuild business processes across finance, operations, revenue, and GTM. Hire, develop, and lead a team of AI Engineers and Process Analysts, setting standards for AI workflow design, evaluation, and deployment, including prompt systems and LLM integrations. Partner deeply with functional leaders to redesign processes and drive organizational change through technology, ensuring adoption for sustained impact.

What you'd actually do

  1. Own the Applied AI roadmap by identifying high-leverage opportunities to rebuild business processes across finance, operations, revenue, and GTM
  2. Hire, develop, and lead a team of AI Engineers and Process Analysts while establishing a culture of fast iteration
  3. Partner deeply with functional leaders to understand current work flows and design AI-first solutions to eliminate friction
  4. Set standards for how the team designs, evaluates, and deploys AI workflows, including prompt systems and LLM integrations
  5. Establish metrics for each process transformation and hold the team accountable to time savings, error reduction, and cost impact

Skills

Required

  • 7+ years of experience in software engineering, AI/ML, or technical product leadership
  • At least 2 years leading teams that shipped AI-powered systems in production
  • Deep hands-on familiarity with LLMs, agentic workflows, and AI automation tooling such as OpenAI, LangChain, and vector databases
  • Strong engineering skills and the ability to credibly review and guide technical decisions
  • Track record of driving organizational change through technology and ensuring tools are adopted for sustained impact
  • Experience working across functional boundaries to redesign processes with strong instincts for change management
  • Excellent communication skills to distill complex AI concepts for a non-technical executive audience
  • Bias toward shipping by moving fast and setting clear expectations for high standards

Nice to have

  • Scala
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Java
  • MySQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • Snowflake
  • AWS
  • GitHub
  • Copilot on GitHub
  • Claude Code
  • Datadog

What the JD emphasized

  • lead teams that shipped AI-powered systems in production
  • Maintain deep hands-on familiarity with LLMs, agentic workflows, and AI automation tooling such as OpenAI, LangChain, and vector databases
  • Show a track record of driving organizational change through technology and ensuring tools are adopted for sustained impact
  • Apply experience working across functional boundaries to redesign processes with strong instincts for change management
  • Maintain a bias toward shipping by moving fast and setting clear expectations for high standards

Other signals

  • leading a new applied AI organization
  • architecting an AI-first operating model
  • shipping production-ready systems
  • partnering cross-functionally to redesign core processes