Senior Director of AI, R&D & Agentic Systems

QuillBot

7h•$218,000 - $421,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As Senior Director of AI, you will serve as the primary architect of QuillBot’s intelligence layer, leading the evolution from a suite of AI tools to a unified, agent-driven AI-native creative platform. We are at an inflection point, transitioning rapidly from a collection of discrete capabilities into a cohesive system where users can move seamlessly from high-level intent to fully realized outputs across writing, research, and design. You will define and build the orchestration systems that unify QuillBot’s products into cohesive, multi-step workflows—enabling intelligent systems to plan, coordinate, and execute complex creative tasks. This role will define how intelligence is integrated across every QuillBot product experience. Reporting to the VP of AI, you will lead both AI R&D and Applied AI teams, shaping the model stack, agentic infrastructure, and production systems that power tens of millions of users. This role operates at the intersection of research, AI alignment, systems architecture, and product strategy, requiring technical depth, execution velocity, and the ability to drive alignment across Engineering, Product, and executive leadership. This role sits within QuillBot’s senior leadership team and carries significant influence over QuillBot’s technical direction, strategy, and tactical execution. In your first six months, you will: Ship and iterate on production agentic workflows connecting QuillBot's core tools and surfaces, proving the orchestration architecture under real user load Make high-conviction technical bets on the model stack, compute strategy, and agent execution model, with written rationale that the org can build against Own the technical point of view on which ICP verticals and workflows justify agentic investment, and drive that conviction into AI, product, and engineering planning Inherit and reshape the AI org to match the velocity and scope of what we're building, including hiring where gaps exist

Requirements

AI & Systems Expertise
Experience building and shipping agentic systems or orchestration platforms in production at meaningful scale, not prototypes or research demos
Distributed Agency: deep expertise coordinating diverse agent populations (plan-based, scripted, and hybrid) within stateful environments, including task decomposition, intent routing, and multi-step execution
State & Persistence: proven ability to design and operate systems that maintain sustained, context-aware agency across multi-session and multi-domain workflows
Compute Economics: ability to optimize sophisticated planning logic against the constraints of latency, unit economics, and reliability at consumer scale
Background in NLP and/or multimodal AI (text and image preferred), with the ability to guide applied research, evaluate model architectures, and make binding technical decisions on model strategy across proprietary and third-party ecosystems
Leadership & Execution
Proven leadership of both AI R&D and Applied AI/MLOps teams within consumer product environments serving millions of users
Track record of scaling AI systems and infrastructure from early-stage builds (0→1) into high-scale production (1→10), not just inheriting mature platforms
Forms strong technical opinions quickly, updates them based on evidence rather than consensus, and translates AI capabilities into product direction and business impact
Has built or reshaped AI organizations to match the demands of a rapidly evolving technical mandate, including hiring, restructuring, and raising the performance bar
Cross-Functional Influence
Drives alignment across Engineering, Product, and executive stakeholders through technical credibility and strategic clarity, not positional authority
Operates effectively across global distributed teams and time zones

Nice To Haves

Experience with agent-to-tool communication frameworks or emerging standards (e.g., MCP, agent SDKs)
Contributions to peer-reviewed research or involvement in the broader AI research community
Experience with browser-based or edge compute environments (e.g., WebGPU)
Background in creative, productivity, or prosumer software platforms
Experience operating in founder-led or highly entrepreneurial environments

Responsibilities

AI Architecture & Orchestration
Design and lead systems for intent recognition, task decomposition, and multi-step execution across QuillBot’s product surfaces
Define how agentic systems plan, coordinate, and execute workflows across a multi-surface application suite
Establish standards for agent-native infrastructure, enabling product surfaces to be machine-readable and executable
AI R&D & Multimodal Systems
Lead research and development across text and multimodal domains, with an initial focus on text and image capabilities
Build on QuillBot’s existing strengths in NLP while extending into new modalities to create differentiated product experiences
Make model strategy decisions across proprietary and third-party systems, balancing capability, cost, and shipping velocity
Applied AI & Platform Operations
Drive the shipping cadence for model updates, MLOps, and data pipelines across high-scale production
Own system reliability and performance of the AI stack serving tens of millions of users worldwide
Balance system performance, latency, and cost through informed decisions on compute economics and architecture
Leadership & Cross-Functional Alignment
Build and lead an integrated AI organization spanning R&D and Applied AI teams
Partner with the VP of AI and senior leadership to define technical direction, evaluate trade-offs, and guide platform-level decisions
Drive alignment across Engineering, Product, and Design to ensure adoption of agent-native standards
Raise the quality bar across the organization, acting as a force multiplier for team performance and execution
Architect the team's operating model around AI-native workflows, using automated pipelines, code generation, and internal tooling to achieve output disproportionate to headcount

Benefits

Competitive salary and annual bonus
Medical coverage, including full dental and vision
Retirement savings plans
Life and disability benefits
Vacation & leaves of absence
Annual family planning stipend
Social responsibility program (volunteer time off and donation matching)
Developmental opportunities through education & developmental reimbursements & professional workshops
Maternity & parental leave
Hybrid & remote model with flexible working hours
On-site & remote company events throughout the year
Annual wellness stipend
Monthly tech stipend
Employee referral program
Premium access to QuillBot