Associate Director, AI Engineer

Job Description: Reports To: VP, AI Agents & Automation

Team: AI Agents & Automation

Role Summary We are seeking an Associate Director, AI Engineer to help build the next generation of AI agents at dentsu. This role is a senior technical individual contributor position focused on designing and delivering multi‑agent systems that transform data intelligence into automated, client‑facing workflows.

You will partner closely with the VP of AI Agents & Automation, write production code, set engineering patterns, and collaborate with an offshore engineering team to deliver scalable, reliable AI products. This role blends architectural decision‑making with hands‑on development.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build multi‑agent systems using LLM orchestration frameworks for client‑facing AI products.
• Implement end‑to‑end AI orchestration use cases for clients, ensuring reliability, maintainability, and high-quality delivery.
• Build agentic wrappers and interfaces around data science models (e.g., MMM, forecasting, incrementality) to support conversational access.
• Configure Genie spaces to enable client data exploration and self‑service analytics.
• Develop reusable agent components, prompt templates, and tool‑use libraries to accelerate future deployments.
• Evaluate LLM providers based on capability, cost, and latency, and recommend optimal options for each use case.
• Collaborate with the Offshore Director Staff AI Engineer on architecture direction, design patterns, and coding standards.
• Write production‑grade Python with appropriate error handling, observability, CI/CD integration, and deployment automation.
• Partner closely with Data Scientists to understand models and create resilient, accurate agent interfaces.
• Contribute to technical documentation, architecture decision records, and operational runbooks.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with strong Python skills.
• 2+ years of hands‑on experience working with LLMs (e.g., prompt engineering, RAG, function calling, agent frameworks).
• Experience with at least one agent orchestration framework (LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or similar).
• Strong system design skills, including API architecture and distributed systems.
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred) and container orchestration.
• Familiarity with vector databases, embeddings, and large‑scale RAG systems.
• Strong debugging, performance optimization, and problem‑solving skills.
• Effective collaboration skills for partnering with distributed teams across regions and time zones.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Databricks and/or Genie.
• Background in media, advertising, or marketing technology.
• Experience with MLOps, model‑serving infrastructure, and production model lifecycle.
• Experience building conversational AI or copilot‑style products.
• Open‑source contributions related to agentic AI.

The annual salary range for this position is $94,000 - $152,662. Placement within the salary range is based on a variety of factors, including relevant experience, knowledge, skills, and other factors permitted by law.

Benefits available with this position include:

• Medical, vision, and dental insurance,
• Life insurance,
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance,
• 401k,
• Flexible paid time off,
• At least 15 paid holidays per year,
• Paid sick and safe leave, and
• Paid parental leave.

Dentsu also complies with applicable state and local laws regarding employee leave benefits, including, but not limited to providing time off pursuant to the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, in accordance with its plans and policies. For further details regarding Dentsu benefits, please visit www.dentsubenefitsplus.com.

At dentsu, we believe great work happens when we’re connected. Our way of working combines flexibility with in-person collaboration to spark ideas and strengthen our teams. Employees who live within a commutable distance of one of our hub offices, currently located in Chicago, metro Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York City, are required and expected to work from the office three days per week (two days per week for employees based in Los Angeles). Dentsu may designate other Hub offices at any time. Those who live outside a commutable range may be designated as remote, depending on the role and business needs. Regardless of your work locatio…