Head of AI, San Francisco
About The Position
Adyen is building a top-tier AI research engineering hub in San Francisco to help drive our next chapter of innovation. This is a rare opportunity to be the builder, operator and shaper of how we apply AI across our global platform - a publicly traded fintech powering e2e payments and financial products across the globe with access to a rich dataset (1.4 trillion USD processed volume in 2024). We're looking for a visionary, highly technical, hands-on technical leader who is deeply immersed in the latest AI research-especially Generative AI (GenAI), Large Language Models (LLMs), and agentic workflows-and is excited to translate ideas into scalable, production-ready systems. You'll build cross-functionally with our global teams to explore how AI can enhance our products, improve our infrastructure, and most critically: create real business impact. While the initial focus is building and scaling the discipline, we're also looking for someone who brings experience building high impact engineering teams, defining disciplines, and who's excited to help shape and grow our AI presence in the Bay Area over time.
Requirements
- Visionary Technical Leadership: You are a highly technical, hands-on leader who maintains deep expertise in cutting-edge AI research, particularly GenAI, LLMs, and agentic workflows, and are capable of defining and executing a multi-year technical roadmap for a new discipline.
- Building & Scaling Expertise: You possess a proven track record of successfully hiring, mentoring, and leading world-class engineering teams.
- Strategic Execution: You are motivated by building new disciplines in ambiguous environments and thrive on defining the charter and long-term vision for the team.
- Research to Production Credibility: You have demonstrated experience leading teams to translate complex academic research into robust, scalable, and high-performance production systems, and you are comfortable setting the technical excellence bar for this discipline.
- Business and Product Alignment: You own the measurable impact of your team's work, strategically aligning research initiatives with critical business outcomes and defining success metrics that drive meaningful, visible impact across the global platform.
- Culture and Influence: You are energized by the opportunity to define the technical culture, mentor and influence engineers across Adyen globally, and represent Adyen's AI mission both internally and externally.
- Domain Context: You possess a nuanced understanding of the unique security, privacy, and performance challenges inherent in bridging scientific AI research with real-world applications in a regulated, high-scale fintech environment.
Responsibilities
- Assembling a World-Class Team: Hire, build and mentor Adyen's San Francisco AI hub from the ground up by leading your team to rapidly prototype AI features and implement research into production-quality systems.
- Own the Charter, Scale the Vision: Define and execute the long-term vision for AI at Adyen, how we ship new products by building autonomous AI systems, and how AI interacts with consumers, merchants and financial institutions by chartering alignment with the business that builds for the future in mind.
- Technical Execution, Research and Project Management:
- Translate cutting-edge research papers into robust, scalable code that delivers measurable business value.
- Collaborate closely with Adyen's global engineering and product teams to integrate AI into existing products and internal tooling.
- Contribute to research efforts in areas such as AI agents for operational workflows, human-in-the-loop systems for Integrity Risk, and experimentation with foundational models.
- Define and track success metrics for your research implementations, ensuring they drive meaningful and visible impact.
- AI Community Research and Engagements: Stay connected to the AI research community in San Francisco, attending key events and surfacing relevant trends or partnership opportunities.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Executive
Industry
Credit Intermediation and Related Activities
Education Level
No Education Listed
Number of Employees
1,001-5,000 employees
