Senior Director of AI, R&D – Agentic Systems

Role Overview

• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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.

Requirements

• 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
• 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
• 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.

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