Director, Automation Engineering

Role Description

NBCUniversal Advertising Products & Solutions (AP&S) is responsible for the product development and project management of NBCUniversal’s full advertising technology suite. From sales support to campaign execution, delivery, and billing, our division services both internal and external customers in support of NBCUniversal’s $7B+ annual advertising business. Together, we’re building the platform that powers the future of advertising at NBCU.

We are seeking a Director, Automation Engineering to join the Engineering & Operations team. Reporting to the Sr. Director of Engineering & Operations, this role will build AI-enabled automation systems and production-grade software that support NBCUniversal's data collaboration ecosystem.

The ideal candidate is a strong engineering leader who can set technical direction, deliver reliable systems, repeatable workflows, and AI agents that automate complex engineering and operational tasks across data platforms for audience activation, measurement, and reporting.

Responsibilities

• AI Agent & Automation Engineering
  • Lead the design and delivery of internal AI agents and automation workflows using technologies such as Snowflake Cortex, LangChain, LangGraph or similar frameworks.
  • Guide the development of reusable tools, APIs, and components that engineers can compose into new agentic workflows.
  • Direct retrieval-augmented generation workflows, context management strategies, and prompt patterns that improve accuracy, reliability, latency, and cost efficiency.
• Agent Evaluation & Reliability
  • Establish evaluation harnesses, regression tests, and monitoring patterns for AI-agent behavior.
  • Define and hold the team accountable to metrics such as task completion, groundedness, response accuracy, latency, cost, and failure rate.
  • Set guardrails and validation patterns to reduce hallucinations, unsafe outputs, and unreliable automation behavior.
  • Partner with engineering and operations teams to move AI workflows from prototype to production-ready systems.
• Software Engineering & Platform Development
  • Oversee the design, build, and maintenance of production-grade Python applications, libraries, and services.
  • Champion object-oriented design principles, including encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance/composition, reusable interfaces, and clean separation of concerns.
  • Champion software engineering best practices including modular design, automated testing, CI/CD, code reviews, observability, and documentation.
  • Drive reusable engineering patterns that reduce bespoke development effort and improve consistency across partner engagements.
  • Collaborate with product, engineering, operations, and data platform teams to translate repeatable business needs into scalable technical solutions.
• Audience & Measurement Productization
  • Lead the development of reusable Python libraries that support clean room capabilities across first-party audience workflows and core measurement use cases.
  • Abstract complex analytical and data collaboration workflows into repeatable, self-service components for internal teams and external partners.
  • Enable configurable feature deployment so new audience and measurement capabilities can be delivered quickly and consistently across partners.
• Team Leadership & Technical Mentorship
  • Hire, develop, and retain a high-performing team of software and AI engineers.
  • Mentor engineers through code reviews, technical design discussions, and operational best practices.
  • Help establish engineering standards for AI-assisted workflows, agentic system design, reusable libraries, and production automation.
  • Promote a culture of reliability, maintainability, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Education: Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Engineering Leadership: 8+ years of software engineering experience, including experience leading and mentoring engineering teams.
• Software Engineering: Deep hands-on experience building production-grade software using Python, including libraries, services, testing, CI/CD, and code reviews.
• AI / LLM Engineering: Hands-on experience building applications using LLMs, RAG, vector databases, prompt engineering, or frameworks such as Snowflake Cortex, LangChain, LangGraph, or similar tools.
• Agentic Systems / Automation: Experience designing AI-enabled workflows, reasoning agents, tool-using agents, or complex automation systems.
• Data Platforms: 5+ years of hands-on experience with cloud data platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks, or similar technologies.
• System Designs: Strong understanding of production system design, including observability, reliability, scalability, performance tuning, and operational support.

Preferred Qualifications

• Clean Room Knowledge: Exposure to data clean room concepts or platforms such as Snowflake Clean Rooms, Databricks Clean Rooms and LiveRamp/Habu.
• Ad Tech / Measurement: Experience with advertising technology, audience activation, campaign delivery, reach and frequency, attribution, incrementality, or reporting workflows.
• Certifications: Snowflake SnowPro Core Certification, Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate, or similar cloud/data platform certification.

Requirements

• This position has been designated as fully remote, meaning that the position is expected to contribute from a non-NBCUniversal worksite, most commonly an employee’s residence.

Benefits

• This position is eligible for company sponsored benefits, including medical, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), paid leave, tuition reimbursement, and a variety of other discounts and perks.

Salary Range

• $165,000 - $210,000 (bonus and long-term incentive eligible)

Additional Information

• As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with an NBCUniversal employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision.
• NBCUniversal's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
• If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation if you are unable or limited in your ability to use or access nbcunicareers.com as a result of your disability.
• For LA County and City Residents Only: NBCUniversal will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories, or arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with relevant legal requirements.