Director, AI Engineering

Axial Search; United States; On-site; USD 250,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

Axial Search is seeking a senior AI architecture leader in the United States to design and evolve AI architectures across product lines. You will mentor AI/ML engineers, translate business requirements into architectural needs, and drive best practices for deployment, monitoring, and governance.

The role emphasizes leading teams through complex technical challenges, communicating trade-offs to stakeholders, and aligning architecture with business strategy and product roadmaps.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in AI/ML systems with at least 3 years in architecture/leadership.
• Deep fluency in ML systems design, including training pipelines, inference, model serving, and monitoring.
• Experience leading engineering teams (5+ people) through complex challenges and shipping at scale.
• Strong track record making architectural decisions under uncertainty and communicating trade-offs.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern data/ML stack in production environments.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and evolution of AI architecture across product lines, balancing performance, scalability, and cost.
• Lead and mentor a team of AI/ML engineers and architects, setting technical direction and maintaining execution quality.
• Partner with product, data science, and platform teams to translate business requirements into architectural requirements.
• Drive adoption of best practices around model deployment, monitoring, versioning, and governance.
• Evaluate new AI/ML tools, frameworks, and infrastructure; make build-vs-buy decisions on core capabilities.
• Lead technical design reviews for high-stakes AI initiatives; assess risk and mitigation strategies.
• Communicate technical strategy and progress to executives; translate decisions into business impact.

Skills

AI architecture leadership

ML systems design

Team leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Stakeholder communication

Tools

AWS cloud

GCP

Azure

Job description

Axial Search is a specialist executive search firm built for one kind of hire: leaders who help organizations navigate AI transformation.

Visit our website to learn more about our process and explore free tools for your job search, including our live job market dashboard with salary, skills and hiring trend data from thousands of AI transformation roles.

What The Market Looks Like

We've tracked over 500 senior-level AI architecture postings across the US in the last six months, with the strongest hiring concentrated in California, Texas, and New York. Compensation for directors in this function typically lands between $250K and $420K annually. Organizations posting for this seniority are looking for leaders who can translate business strategy into concrete AI systems, lead cross-functional teams through technical complexity, and own architectural decisions that shape product roadmap. The best candidates bring a mix of deep technical fluency in AI/ML systems design, proven experience scaling engineering teams, and the ability to communicate architectural trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Job Responsibilities

• Own the design and evolution of AI architecture across one or more product lines, balancing performance, scalability, and cost
• Lead and mentor a team of AI/ML engineers, architects, and senior individual contributors, setting technical direction and raising bar on execution
• Partner with product, data science, and platform teams to translate business requirements into architectural requirements and validate feasibility
• Drive adoption of best practices around model deployment, monitoring, versioning, and governance across engineering organization
• Evaluate and integrate new AI/ML tools, frameworks, and infrastructure; make build-vs-buy decisions on core capabilities
• Lead technical design reviews on high-stakes AI initiatives; own risk assessment and mitigation for novel approaches
• Communicate technical strategy and progress to executive stakeholders; translate architectural decisions into business impact

Candidate Requirements

• 8+ years of hands-on experience building and shipping AI/ML systems, with at least 3 years in an architecture or technical leadership role
• Deep technical fluency in machine learning systems design, including training pipelines, inference infrastructure, model serving, and monitoring
• Demonstrated experience leading engineering teams (5+ people) through complex technical challenges and shipping at scale
• Strong track record making architectural decisions under uncertainty and communicating trade-offs across technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern data/ML stack tools in production environments
• Comfort operating as a bridge between technical execution and business strategy; ability to map business problems to technical solutions