AI Technology Director — North America AI Strategy Lead

Umain AB; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 200,000 - 225,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare benefits

Vacation policy

Flexible time off

Job summary

Umain, part of Eidra, is expanding its AI engineering team in the US. Based in Chicago, you will be the most senior technical voice in AI in North America, leading our clients’ most ambitious projects and setting the technical direction for the team.

You’ll work alongside strategy, design, and marketing, shape pitches and proposals, and help build our AI practice across North America and Europe. This role requires deep hands-on AI experience and the ability to explain complex concepts to

Qualifications

• 10+ years of engineering experience, with at least 3 hands-on with AI.
• Several years in consulting or agency environments, working directly with clients on complex, multi-team engagements.
• Real commercial expertise. You’re comfortable shaping and pricing proposals and scoping work as the technical authority.
• A clear perspective on where AI is headed and a track record of turning emerging opportunities into action.
• Experience building and shipping things yourself, not only advising on them.
• A track record of architecting and overseeing delivery of complex AI solutions that hold up in production.
• Hands‑on experience with modern GenAI: LLMs, embeddings and vector databases, retrieval, agents, fine‑tuning and evaluation, and working with the major model providers.
• Range beyond GenAI, such as classic machine learning, computer vision, multimodal models, forecasting or recommendation systems, and a sense of when each is the right tool.
• Strong engineering skills in Python and/or TypeScript, including backend systems and data pipelines.
• Experience deploying and running applications on AWS, Azure or GCP, with solid DevOps habits (containers, CI/CD, monitoring).
• The presence to lead conversations with senior executives and the ability to explain complex concepts clearly.
• A knack for turning vague questions into concrete plans for clients.
• Sound judgment about when to use AI—and when not to—and the openness to rethink your approach as evidence evolves.
• Curiosity about new capabilities, and a habit of trying things yourself before forming a view.

Responsibilities

• Lead technology and AI conversations with senior client stakeholders as a credible counterpart to their CTO.
• Keep track of where AI is heading, across GenAI, agents, machine learning, computer vision, on-device and physical AI, and turn that into clear advice for clients and for our own direction.
• Set the technical vision and architecture standards across our AI work, weighing what's possible against what's practical and safe.
• Guide and mentor our AI engineers, help with architectural choices, raise the quality bar, and step in on the hardest problems.
• Stay hands-on enough to know what's real, prototyping new capabilities when it's the fastest way to find out.
• Assess feasibility and risk on AI work, including data security, privacy, licensing, regulation, and responsible use.
• Oversee delivery from idea to production: keeping teams focused, clearing bottlenecks, and spotting problems before they show up.
• Support commercial work as the technical counterpart: joining pitches, shaping proposals, and defining scope and budgets to win work we can deliver.
• Help build our AI engineering team in North America and work closely with our teams in Europe.
• Be a visible voice for Umain's AI work in the U.S., with clients and in the wider industry.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

AI engineering

Cloud platforms

DevOps

Prototyping

Executive communication

Architecting AI

Data pipelines

LLMs

Tools

AWS

Azure

GCP

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Umain, part of Eidra, is expanding its AI engineering team in the US. Based in Chicago, you will be the most senior technical voice in AI in North America, leading our clients’ most ambitious projects and setting the technical direction for the team.

You’ll work alongside strategy, design, and marketing, shape pitches and proposals, and help build our AI practice across North America and Europe. This role requires deep hands-on AI experience and the ability to explain complex concepts to