Head of Applied AI
Raydar
Head of Applied AI
Raydar
AI-powered recruiting agency for tech roles
Raydar · San Francisco, United States · Full-time · Posted 2026-11-07
Salary: USD 350,000–500,000
Workplace: on_site
About the company
Our client is an artificial intelligence company.
The role
Raydar is recruiting for this role on behalf of our client. Lead the engineering organization for an applied AI product, setting technical direction, building and developing the team, and staying hands-on with production code. The role combines engineering leadership with individual building, customer-facing technical discussions, and input into which technical directions to pursue.
What you'll do
- Chart the engineering course and determine which components are common across the platform versus tailored to individual clients.
- Recruit strong engineers, grow the people already on the team, and expect sound engineering judgment.
- Contribute production code and personally solve hard engineering problems with the group.
- Represent engineering in important customer conversations and take ownership of hard technical issues.
- Weigh competing priorities such as dependability, polish, delivery pace and client requirements, ensuring design choices translate into a stronger product.
- Pick the most promising experiments to pursue, convert research findings into roadmap items, and judge when work is ready for release.
What we're looking for
- 3 to 5 years of experience.
- Experience building and shipping AI agent systems at a startup or scale-up, with a pivotal role in the work.
- Hands-on familiarity with the difficulties of running AI systems in live settings, such as dependability, testing, external integrations, information handling and recovering from mistakes.
- Track record of guiding a product's structure as it expands, deciding which parts are shared and which are bespoke for particular clients.
- Background in developing an engineering team: bringing in strong people, coaching them and holding releases to a demanding standard.
- Opinionated views on AI system design, including memory, evaluation and permissioning in enterprise settings.
- A hands-on builder who still writes and ships production code.
- Ability to earn customer trust in difficult technical conversations and resolve the underlying problem.
Compensation and benefits
- Base salary: USD 350,000 to 500,000 per year
- Competitive compensation
Location and work model
- San Francisco, CA, United States
- On-site
- Full-time
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Raydar is an AI-powered talent acquisition firm that serves tech-focused organizations on a contingency basis, charging client companies only after a successful hire. It uses proprietary AI to identify a large pool of candidates and conducts a short 15-minute AI-driven interview (recorded and transcribed) before human recruiters review materials, provide interview prep, and assist with offers and negotiations. What sets it apart is the blend of automated sourcing and screening with hands-on human oversight and tailored client support. Its goal is to help organizations hire more efficiently by speeding up sourcing while maintaining thorough evaluation and negotiation assistance.
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