Tech Director, AI Products

R/GA, Marketing Agency

Tech Director, AI Products

New York, NY

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**About R/GA** R/GA is a globally renowned design and innovation network that has been reinventing industry standards for over four decades. From pioneering computer-assisted film production to defining digital platforms of the connected age — such as the original Nike+ ecosystem and the launch of Beats by Dre — R/GA helps brands adapt and thrive in the face of disruptive technology. Now independent, we are investing heavily in AI to lead the Intelligence Age.

**About AI Products (AIP)** AI Products (AIP) is the team building R/GA’s next chapter. Our mandate is to shift the business from service-as-labor to service-as-software — turning innovation already taking shape across the network into reusable AI products R/GA can take to market. We build with agents: a substantial share of our code is agent-generated, and every team member is an expert at directing agents to produce production-quality work. We are engineering-led, small by design, and just getting started.

**About The Role** As the Tech Director of AI Products, you will be the founding technical leader of our team — a hands-on, full-stack player-coach who sets the architecture and ships production code. You will lead the engineering work on our first product bets, shape the patterns R/GA will inherit as it ships AI to the market, and partner directly with our Head of AI Products and the R/GA Global CTO.

You will work within a small, senior team — alongside an AI Engineer and a Senior PM — with an explicit mandate to ship reusable products rather than bespoke client work.

This is an engineer-first role requiring the judgment of an architect and the instincts of a founder. You will write production code daily across the stack, directing agents fluently and writing by hand where it matters most. We hire for one specific shape: technically minded, T-shaped individuals with a track record of building long-term AI products that have shipped, sold, and lasted — not just demos.

**Key Responsibilities**

• Hands-on Full-Stack Engineering: Ship production code across the stack — frontend, backend, AI/ML, and infrastructure. As a player-coach, you will contribute daily, not just review code.
• Agent-Driven Development: Lead how AIP builds with agents. Set the standards, patterns, and tooling that ensure agent-generated code is production-quality.
• Architecture & Platform: Define the reference architecture, runtime, and tooling underlying AIP’s products, ensuring each is genuinely reusable across clients.
• Engineering Leadership: Lead the technical build of our first product bets. Set patterns, mentor the team, and raise the bar.
• Productization Discipline: Ensure every product ships as a working demo, a marketing deck, and a reusable codebase. Hold the line against one-off custom work.
• Cross-Network Partnership: Coordinate with R/GA’s CTO and engineering teams to harvest patterns and ensure architectural coherence.
• Talent: Hire, develop, and retain a high-bar engineering team.
• Pitch Support: Act as the authoritative technical voice in the room during high-stakes pitches.
• Roadmap & Bet Selection: Partner with Paul and Nick to evaluate productization opportunities and decide what scales versus what retires.

**Qualifications**

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years leading AI-powered products in production.
• Full-stack engineering capability: strong in at least three of the following — modern frontend (React/TypeScript), backend (Python/Node/Go), AI/ML systems and pipelines, or infrastructure. You are comfortable picking up tickets across the stack.
• Expertise in agent-driven development. You know when to drive an agent and when to write code yourself, as well as how to review and harden agent output before it ships.
• Deep fluency in generative AI: LLMs, agent frameworks, retrieval architectures, evaluation methods, and deployment patterns.
• A proven track record of shipping reusable software products (not just custom client builds).
• Founding-team or early-engineering-leader experience at a startup, studio, or product organization.
• Comfortable presenting to the C-suite and senior client technologists while keeping technical credibility intact.
• A strong bias for shipping. A tight v0 in two weeks beats a perfect roadmap in two months.

Bonus Points for

• Prior …