Director, AI Applications Engineering

Versant•Orlando, FL

5d•Remote

About The Position

We are seeking a Director, AI Applications Engineering, to lead the design, development, and delivery of applied AI systems across business units. This role sits at the intersection of engineering leadership, AI/ML innovation, and product strategy. You will establish the vision for AI application engineering, build and mentor a cross-functional team, and ensure that our AI systems are production-grade, scalable, and aligned with business needs. This is both a strategic and hands-on role: you’ll partner with product and executive stakeholders to shape the roadmap, while guiding engineers through rapid prototyping, support of existing applications, and production delivery of AI-powered applications.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in a Director-level (or equivalent) leadership role.
Proven track record building and leading teams that deliver production-grade AI/ML applications.
Deep knowledge of LLMs, generative AI frameworks, and applied AI systems.
Strong technical expertise in backend/platform engineering, with fluency in Python and at least one other modern language (Go, Node.js, Rust, etc).
Experience deploying AI systems at scale (cloud-native, containerized, CI/CD integrated).
Familiarity with MLOps and GenAI ecosystems (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Hugging Face, MLflow, Weights & Biases).
Experience with Amazon Bedrock
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to engage both technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice To Haves

Experience with other large entertainment focused platforms, centered around being consumer-facing at a large scale
Familiarity and hands-on exposure with MCP Servers and highly accessible and available API platforms
Knowledge of microservices and event-driven architectures at enterprise scale
Cloud-native, global scaling experience (AWS and their various tool offerings)
Understanding of the mindset of “Fail Fast, Learn Fast” and continuous improvement

Responsibilities

Define and own the strategy for AI applications across DPV, with emphasis on LLM and generative AI platforms.
Shape and drive the enterprise-wide AI Applications strategy, ensuring consistency, scalability, and ethical best practices across business units.
Establish and lead a Center of Excellence for Applied AI, creating reusable frameworks, standards, and accelerators that other teams can adopt.
Partner with product and business leaders to identify high-value opportunities for AI application development.
Guide build vs. buy decisions for applied AI systems, ensuring maximum value and IP ownership.
Build, lead, and mentor a cross-functional team of AI/ML engineers.
Foster a culture of innovation, technical depth, and pragmatic delivery.
Guide technical and career development for engineers at all levels.
Oversee design and delivery of AI-powered applications, such as conversational agents, agents, workflow automation, and recommendation systems.
Ensure solutions are production-ready, scalable, and secure, with strong observability and testing practices.
Drive adoption of modern GenAI practices: RAG pipelines, model fine-tuning, prompt/context engineering, evaluation frameworks, and guardrails.
Serve as a key partner to executive stakeholders, communicating progress, risks, and outcomes clearly.
Translate complex AI concepts into business impact narratives for leadership.
Act as a thought leader and evangelist for applied AI applications across the enterprise.