Director of Artificial Intelligence

Harnham; United States; Remote; USD 248,000 - 303,000; Full time

Job summary

Harnham is seeking a Director of AI to lead the strategy, architecture and delivery of next-gen AI capabilities. This role requires hands-on engineering leadership and a track record of shipping AI systems into production.

You will own the AI and Agentic AI strategy, design scalable AI agents and workflows, and define standards for LLMs, guardrails and evaluations. A global engineering team will report to you as you partner with executives to maximize impact.

Qualifications

• Experience leading engineering teams and delivering AI products to production.
• Hands-on engineering leadership with deep AI system experience.
• Strong background in agentic AI, RAG, and LLM-based architectures.

Responsibilities

• Own and execute the organization's AI and Agentic AI strategy.
• Design and scale production AI agents, RAG systems and intelligent workflows.
• Define architecture and engineering standards around LLMs, MCP, A2A, evaluations and guardrails.
• Build a scalable AI platform that enables teams to take use cases from prototype through to production.
• Shape model strategy, balancing performance, cost, scalability and the right models for different workloads.
• Lead and develop a global engineering team, while remaining close to architecture and technical decision-making.
• Partner with senior leadership to identify where AI can have the biggest impact across products and internal operations.
• Establish strong practices around AI governance, security, privacy and responsible deployment.

Skills

Software engineering leadership

AI product development

Agentic AI

RAG

LLMs

AI infrastructure

Technical architecture

Tools

Agent frameworks

Evaluations tooling

Job description

Director of AI | Fully Remote, US | Up to $275K

I’m partnering with a global organization making a significant investment in AI and Agentic AI, and they’re looking for a Director of AI to lead the strategy, architecture and delivery of their next generation of AI capabilities.

This is not a strategy-only role. They’re looking for someone who combines senior engineering leadership with genuine hands-on technical depth, and who has personally built and shipped AI systems into production.

What you’ll be doing

• Own and execute the organization's AI and Agentic AI strategy
• Design and scale production AI agents, RAG systems and intelligent workflows
• Define architecture and engineering standards around LLMs, MCP, A2A, evaluations and guardrails
• Build a scalable AI platform that enables teams to take use cases from prototype through to production
• Shape model strategy, balancing performance, cost, scalability and the right models for different workloads
• Lead and develop a global engineering team, while remaining close to architecture and technical decision-making
• Partner with senior leadership to identify where AI can have the biggest impact across products and internal operations
• Establish strong practices around AI governance, security, privacy and responsible deployment

What they’re looking for

• Strong background in software engineering and engineering leadership
• Proven experience building and shipping AI products into production
• Deep knowledge of Agentic AI, RAG, LLMs and modern AI architectures
• Experience with tool use, evaluations, guardrails and agent frameworks
• Strong understanding of modern cloud and AI infrastructure
• Experience leading engineering teams and driving wider AI transformation
• Someone equally comfortable discussing technical architecture with engineers and AI strategy with executives

Compensation: Up to $275K

Location: Fully Remote, US

Focus: Agentic AI | RAG | LLMs | AI Platforms | Engineering Leadership

This is a great opportunity for someone who wants to own AI at an organizational level without stepping away from the technology. You’ll have the opportunity to shape the roadmap, build the engineering capability around it and take ambitious AI initiatives into real-world production.

If you’ve built production AI systems, led strong engineering teams and want to take ownership of a major AI transformation, I’d love to speak.