Director, Applied AI Architects

Braze•New York, NY

3d•$193,000 - $304,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Braze is making AI the default way of working across the company. Our Applied AI Architects are forward-deployed practitioners who combine domain judgment with hands-on build capability: they embed with business teams, treat employees as users and workflows as product surfaces, and ship working agents on shared infrastructure. The function runs in two tracks. GTM Architects are permanently embedded in the GTM organization, each owning a portion of a customer and prospect lifecycle that spans Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Support; when they address friction in one stage, they work the surrounding levers holistically, mapping how those functions connect today and how AI could connect them better. G&A Architects rotate across corporate functions like Finance, People, Legal, and Operations, driving each cohort to self-sufficiency. You will lead this team. That means defining how a new role category operates, owning the portfolio of engagements across the business, and answering for the outcomes: adoption that persists, workflows that measurably improve, and committed bets that read out in business metrics like sales ramp time, quota capacity, and competitive win rate. This is a player-coach role. You will carry enough build and field surface yourself to keep your judgment current, while your primary output is the team: who they are, where they embed, what they ship, and whether it works. You inherit the hiring manager seat for all Architect roles, a unified interview loop, and an operating model with real momentum. What the function becomes from there is yours to shape, in close partnership with our Director of Applied AI Product, the CIO and CTO organizations, and the leaders of the functions your team serves.

Requirements

10+ years of professional experience spanning GTM-adjacent technical work (solutions consulting/architecture, field or forward-deployed engineering, technical GTM strategy) and hands-on building
3+ years leading senior individual contributors, with evidence you developed and retained them
Demonstrated, hands-on experience building AI-powered tools, agents, or workflows that transformed real work, with concrete examples you can speak to in depth
Track record of standing up a new team, practice, or function and scaling it past your own personal capacity
Executive-level communication and stakeholder management, including negotiating priorities with senior leaders
Experience defining and defending business-impact measurement for a technical team

Nice To Haves

You have led forward-deployed engineering or applied AI teams at a model lab, an AI-native company, or a scaled enterprise SaaS business
You have shipped with modern agentic tooling (Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, custom agent frameworks, MCP-style integrations) and enterprise GTM stacks (Salesforce, Gong, Slack, Snowflake)
You have run engagement- or rotation-based operating models (consulting, embedded product teams, customer zero programs)
You have hired for hard-to-define roles and built interview systems that actually predicted performance

Responsibilities

Build the team. Close the open Architect reqs across both tracks (GTM and G&A), then own onboarding, development, and performance for a team of senior, highly autonomous ICs operating in a role category that barely exists in the market. Define what good looks like and what the career path is.
Own the engagement portfolio. Decide where Architects embed, what they prioritize, and when they rotate or scale back. Balance permanent GTM surface ownership against rotational G&A engagements. Say no to good ideas so the team ships great ones.
Answer for the bets. Own delivery and measurement of the committed GTM bets (sales ramp time, quota capacity / customer-facing time, competitive win rate) and run the promotion pipeline for G&A candidate bets. Every bet pairs a business outcome with leading indicators; you keep both honest.
Run the operating discipline. Enforce the engagement lifecycle (discovery, prioritization, readout, design, build, deliver, monitor) and the cohort maturity model. Adoption is the bar: an ignored output is a bug, and your team operates what it ships until it is productized.
Stay hands-on. Review agent designs, specs, and output quality at the system level. Carry a build surface of your own. Your field and build credibility is what earns the team its seat in pipeline reviews and functional staff meetings.
Compound through the platform. Partner with the Director of Applied AI Product to move field-proven patterns into shared infrastructure, and to feed field reality back into platform requirements, evaluation criteria, and measurement frameworks.
Be the executive interface. Negotiate embed agreements with CRO and CBO leadership and functional executives, represent the function's results and roadmap to senior leadership, and protect your team's focus when demand outstrips capacity, which it will.
Write the playbook. The role category is being defined in real time across the industry. Document what works, publish it internally, and make Braze a reference point for how a scaled SaaS company runs applied AI.

Benefits

Competitive compensation that may include equity
Retirement and Employee Stock Purchase Plans
Flexible paid time off
Comprehensive benefit plans covering medical, dental, vision, life, and disability
Family services that include fertility benefits and equal paid parental leave
Professional development supported by formal career pathing, learning platforms, and a yearly learning stipend
A curated in-office employee experience, designed to foster community, team connections, and innovation
Opportunities to give back to your community, including an annual company-wide Volunteer Week and donation matching
Employee Resource Groups that provide supportive communities within Braze
Collaborative, transparent, and fun culture recognized as a Great Place to Work®