AI Technology Director

Umain • Chicago, IL

4d • $200,000 - $225,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

Umain, part of Eidra, is a digital product consultancy with nearly 200 engineers, designers, and product strategists. We partner with companies including McDonald’s, Polestar, Heineken, Rijksmuseum, Spotify, and Philips Hue to shape, build, and scale the products and platforms their businesses and customers rely on. We work in small, senior teams, staying with a product from its first idea through launch and beyond.

Umain is growing its AI engineering team in the US. Our AI engineers around the world design, prototype and build AI-powered tools and software that change how clients work, from advanced GenAI workflows and custom agents to production-ready AI applications. You'll join a global team of more than 30 AI engineers across Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway and North America, working alongside strategy consultants, marketers, data experts and designers.
This full time role is based in Chicago at our West Loop office. As part of Umain's expanding U.S. footprint, you'll help establish our reputation for engineering excellence, strategy, and delivery in the American market. You must be in Chicago or willing to relocate to be considered for this role as we require a minimum of 3 days in-office per week.

Your role as AI Tech Director
You'll be our most senior technical voice in AI in North America, leading our clients’ most ambitious projects—where the technology is new and the answers aren’t obvious.
You'll work as a peer to our clients' CTOs, helping them understand where AI is heading over the next few years (well beyond today's GenAI tools) and what that means for their business now. You'll set the technical direction for our teams and work closely with colleagues in strategy, design, and marketing to get things built.
You ensure our promises are technically sound and our work delivers on them. As the technical counterpart on the commercial side, you help shape and present pitches, develop proposals, and define scope and budgets. This isn’t a deal-hunting role—we don’t expect you to proactively pursue new business.

Requirements

• 10+ years of engineering experience, with at least 3 working hands-on with AI.
• Several years in consulting or agency environments, working directly with clients on complex, multi-team engagements.
• Real commercial expertise. You're comfortable shaping and pricing proposals and scoping work as the technical authority, without needing to hunt for deals yourself.
• A clear perspective on where AI is headed and a track record of turning emerging opportunities into action.
• Experience building and shipping things yourself, not only advising on them. Maybe you founded something, launched a product, or built a new offering from scratch.
• A track record of architecting and overseeing delivery of complex AI solutions that hold up in production.
• Hands-on experience with modern GenAI: LLMs, embeddings and vector databases, retrieval, agents, fine-tuning and evaluation, and working with the major model providers.
• Range beyond GenAI, such as classic machine learning, computer vision, multimodal models, forecasting or recommendation systems, and a sense of when each is the right tool.
• Strong engineering skills in Python and/or TypeScript, including backend systems and data pipelines.
• Experience deploying and running applications on AWS, Azure or GCP, with solid DevOps habits (containers, CI/CD, monitoring).
• The presence to lead conversations with senior executives and the ability to explain complex concepts clearly.
• A knack for turning vague questions into concrete plans for clients.
• Sound judgment about when to use AI—and when not to—and the openness to rethink your approach as evidence evolves.
• Curiosity about new capabilities, and a habit of trying things yourself before forming a view.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with large consumer brands, especially in retail, food service, or automotive.
• Experience with edge or on-device AI, robotics, or AI in physical environments.
• Experience helping build a team or practice in a new market.

Responsibilities

• Lead technology and AI conversations with senior client stakeholders as a credible counterpart to their CTO.
• Keep track of where AI is heading, across GenAI, agents, machine learning, computer vision, on-device and physical AI, and turn that into clear advice for clients and for our own direction.
• Set the technical vision and architecture standards across our AI work, weighing what's possible against what's practical and safe.
• Guide and mentor our AI engineers, help with architectural choices, raise the quality bar, and step in on the hardest problems.
• Stay hands-on enough to know what's real, prototyping new capabilities when it's the fastest way to find out.
• Assess feasibility and risk on AI work, including data security, privacy, licensing, regulation, and responsible use.
• Oversee delivery from idea to production: keeping teams focused, clearing bottlenecks, and spotting problems before they show up.
• Support commercial work as the technical counterpart: joining pitches, shaping proposals, and defining scope and budgets to win work we can deliver.
• Help build our AI engineering team in North America and work closely with our teams in Europe.
• Be a visible voice for Umain's AI work in the U.S., with clients and in the wider industry.

Benefits

• Competitive salary package
• Comprehensive benefits that prioritize employee well-being, reflecting our Nordic heritage.
• Range of healthcare benefits, including fully subsidized insurance premiums for employees and their families.
• Flexible time off, requiring a minimum of 3 weeks off per year.
• Culture emphasizes inclusive decision-making, collaboration, and continuous learning, fostering an environment of transparency and trust.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed