Tech Director, AI Products
About The Position
R/GA is seeking a founding technical leader for its AI Products team. This role is a hands-on, full-stack player-coach responsible for setting the architecture and shipping production code. The Tech Director will lead engineering efforts on new product initiatives, establish patterns for AI productization at R/GA, and collaborate closely with the Head of AI Products and the Global CTO. The position involves working within a small, senior team focused on shipping reusable AI products rather than bespoke client work. This engineer-first role requires architectural judgment and a founder's mindset, with daily coding across the full stack, directing AI agents, and writing critical code manually. The ideal candidate is technically minded, T-shaped, and has a proven history of building long-lasting AI products that have been shipped and sold.
Requirements
- 10+ years of software engineering experience.
- 3+ years leading AI-powered products in production.
- Full-stack engineering capability with strength in at least three of the following: modern frontend (React/TypeScript), backend (Python/Node/Go), AI/ML systems and pipelines, or infrastructure.
- Comfortable picking up tickets across the entire stack.
- Expertise in agent-driven development, knowing when to use agents versus manual coding, and how to review/harden agent output.
- Deep fluency in generative AI, including LLMs, agent frameworks, retrieval architectures, evaluation methods, and deployment patterns.
- Proven track record of shipping reusable software products.
- Experience as a founding team member or early engineering leader in a startup, studio, or product organization.
- Ability to present to C-suite and senior client technologists while maintaining technical credibility.
- Strong bias for shipping, prioritizing quick initial versions over lengthy planning.
Nice To Haves
- Prior experience at an agency, studio, or consulting firm.
- Open-source contributions or published technical writing on AI systems, agent design, or generative interfaces.
- Background in design tooling, brand systems, content infrastructure, or generative interfaces.
- Experience designing platform/SDK abstractions adopted by other engineers.
Responsibilities
- Ship production code across the stack, including frontend, backend, AI/ML, and infrastructure.
- Lead the team's approach to agent-driven development, establishing standards, patterns, and tooling for production-quality agent-generated code.
- Define the reference architecture, runtime, and tooling for AI Products, ensuring reusability.
- Lead the technical development of initial product bets, setting patterns, mentoring the team, and improving technical standards.
- Ensure products are delivered as working demos, marketing materials, and reusable codebases, preventing custom one-off work.
- Collaborate with R/GA's CTO and engineering teams to share patterns and maintain architectural consistency.
- Hire, develop, and retain a high-caliber engineering team.
- Serve as the primary technical authority during high-stakes pitches.
- Partner in evaluating productization opportunities and selecting scalable products.
Benefits
- Independent mandate to invest in AI with direct executive sponsorship.
- Direct line to the Head of AI Products and the Global CTO.
- Work within a senior, intentionally small team with minimal politics or process overhead.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
