Director, Applied AI & Strategy

Director, Applied AI & Strategy

Work Locations: With the exception of some select roles that have in-office requirements, A+E Global Media operates on a flexible model that allows for remote, hybrid or full time in office work (in certain locales). Office locations include New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Stamford, CT. Our list of eligible states in which employees may work remotely includes: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Division Story

A+E's Technology team is deep-rooted in the heart of our business. We have great people and great technologies, and together we take on the toughest challenges. As innovators, we choose to iterate, pivot, and adapt quickly. We've reinvented the way A+E leverages technology to produce and sell world-class content. We've modernized our core solutions and embraced a cloud first approach. Perched on the virtues of our "Technology Code", we make technology better, create solutions together, and most of all, we have fun with it. Our team members are motivated individuals who help each other do remarkable things every day. Together we deliver best-in-class solutions that transform the way A+E works. If this sounds like something you want to be a part of, we want to hear from you!

Job Description

The Role: Director, Applied AI & Strategy

We are seeking a Director, Applied AI & Strategy who views "doing more with less" as a creative challenge, not a budget constraint. In this role, you will be the architect of our internal productivity revolution. Partnering across business functions as well as within Technology & Operations, you will analyze medium-to-highly complex workflows, identify opportunities to apply agentic AI, design those agentic interventions, and help implement those, thus freeing up our people for higher-value work.

This is a "boots-on-the-ground" leadership role for someone that has demonstrated the ability to build production-grade AI solutions using LLMs and agents. Ideally, you are also someone that has experience with the modern concept of harness engineering, using popular coding agents for orchestrated software development. Additionally, you should be external-focused and have your finger on the pulse of AI advancements that are relevant to our business.

More About What You'll Do:

• Hands-on AI Orchestration
• Rapid Prototyping: Rapidly prototype and demonstrate agentic solutions that can make existing workflows more efficient. Based on business feedback, you will refine those prototypes to align with what needs to be built for production. You will help provide cost estimates required to build the business case and make a decision.
• Agent Development: Help build and deploy production grade AI agents using various AI tools, incorporating guardrails, evaluations, and observability to ensure accuracy, reliability, and safety.
• Agent Integration: Integrate AI agents with enterprise resources through MCP. Integrate enterprise applications, including legacy, with agents through APIs.
• Partner with Legal & Business Affairs (L&BA) and Cyber Security to ensure AI adoption respects guardrails and governance.
• Define and track Productivity & ROI measuring hours reclaimed, cost savings and increase in efficiency.
• Maintain composability in toolsets to ensure future agility.
• Industry Insights
• Stay at the forefront of AI developments specifically relevant to the Media Industry and update leadership on findings.
• Move beyond updates to provide leadership with actionable "Buy, Build, Ignore" frameworks based on the relevant AI tools that solve friction points for media & entertainment.
• Administration
• Translate high-level leadership vision into a tactical technical roadmap, prioritizing workstream that yield the highest ROI.
• Rigorously manage scope and stakeholder expectations to move from Proof-of-Concept to Production-Ready.
• Perform technical and functional audits of emerging AI tools that align with media industry workflows.
• Create sensible budgets in high-ambiguity environments.

Basic Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree or demonstrated practical experience.
• 8+ Years of total experience in a technical function (i.e. Solutions Architecture, Digital Transformation, or Technical Operations) with a proven track record of delivering enterprise-grade solutions and advanced workflow integration including demonstrated experience in systems integration and workflow automation.
• Expert in architecting logic across complex SaaS ecosystems, not just automation.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience building with LLMs for production ready agents. This must include demonstrated proficiency in advanced prompting techniques, multi-agent orchestration, RAG Frameworks and a solid grasp of unstructured content and techniques for curation, enrichment, and accurate retrieval for injecting context into LLMs.
• 3+ years of experience managing complex stakeholder relationships, with a proven ability to translate high-level business strategy into tactical execution plans
• Rapid Prototyping: Demonstrated ability to act as a "Vibe Coder", utilizing AI-augmented development tools (i.e. Cursor, Replit, Claude, etc) to ship functional code and automations at high velocity.
• Hands-on experience implementing RAG architectures at scale and/or fine-tuning large language models.
• Certifications in AI/ML technologies and cloud platforms will be an added advantage
• Background in statistical modeling or mathematics is a plus.

Compensation

Annual Pay Range: $188,034 - $220,000 Annual Incentive Target: 17.50%

The annual/hourly pay range displayed serves as a good faith estimate of the minimum and maximum base pay range for this role. Compensation for the role will be based on a number of different factors such as a candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies, location, and experience. A+E offers a competitive total compensation package, which includes healthcare coverage, 401k matching, and a range of other benefits. Learn more at

A+E Global Media proudly provides equal employment opportunity for all employees and job applicants, and makes employment decisions consistent with this principle. The company's employment actions and decisions – including recruitment, hiring, training, promotion, demotion, compensation, transfer, layoff, and termination – are made without regard to an employee's race, color, religion, creed, age, national origin, ancestry, sex (which includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and related medical conditions), gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, alienage or citizenship status, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, family and medical leave status, genetic information, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. A+E Global Media is a joint venture of the Hearst Corporation and The Walt Disney Company. We are proud to be an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer/Disabled/Veterans.