Technical Director

About Paradowski Paradowski Creative is an independent, full-service creative agency based in St. Louis. We bring strategy, creativity, technology and craft together to create experiences that spark curiosity, invite participation and help brands build meaningful connections with people. Our teams work collaboratively across disciplines to solve complex business challenges and produce work that is thoughtful, effective and made with care. We value creative play, clear thinking, accountability, strong relationships and people who care about both the quality of the work and how it gets made. Our next chapter brings those capabilities together in more personalized and immersive ways. We are building the technical leadership needed to make that work distinctive, commercially sound and repeatable. The Role Lead the technical vision behind intelligent, personalized and participatory brand experiences, from the first ambitious idea through a dependable launch. Build the future without breaking production. Paradowski Creative is looking for a Technical Director, AI & Immersive Experiences to lead the technical thinking behind a growing portfolio of interactive, intelligent and experiential work. This is a senior player-coach role for someone who can sit with a creative team at the beginning of an idea, help shape what is possible, and stay close enough to the work to ensure it launches securely, reliably and at the quality our clients expect. You will connect creative ambition with practical architecture across artificial intelligence, real-time and 3D experiences, branded gaming, immersive web, interactive installations and emerging platforms. You will also help us decide when to build, when to partner and when the smartest answer is simpler than the newest technology. This is not a lab role. We value exploration, but the job is to turn exploration into client-ready solutions: scoped clearly, designed responsibly and delivered with confidence. How You Will Work With clients: Translate complex technologies into clear choices, honest tradeoffs and compelling recommendations for senior client teams. With the agency: Partner across creative, strategy, account, production and growth to shape ideas early and carry them through delivery. What You’ll Do Your first instinct is “How could we make this work?” You bring the technical credibility to make the call and the creative curiosity to find a path forward. You bring productive constraint, not simply constraint. Four things this role has to do exceptionally well. Shape the Technical Approach Bring a point of view early, while the idea is still forming. Partner with creative and strategy from the first conversation, bringing possibility and productive constraint to the room. Define the approach for AI-powered, immersive and interactive work: architecture, platforms, integrations and data. Decide when to build, when to partner and when the smartest answer is simpler than the newest technology. Make Ambitious Ideas Buildable Give big ideas a real path to launch. Turn ambiguous concepts into prototypes, clear decision points and a plan that can ship. Prototype quickly enough to learn, then name what must change before production. When an idea will not work as pitched, come back with options that protect what makes it great. Own the Technical Truth Be the trusted voice on what is real, so producers and clients can plan with confidence. Give honest, early reads on feasibility, effort, risk, security and privacy, with options, not surprises. Own technical scoping, estimates and partner recommendations, working closely with producers to establish realistic budgets, timelines and delivery plans. Take accountability for technical budgets, ensuring solutions are appropriately scoped, estimated and delivered within agreed parameters. Producers manage schedules and day-to-day execution. Set the technical quality bar across internal teams and external partners, including reviews, launch readiness and final technical sign-off. Stay Curious and Keep Evolving Keep expanding what Paradowski can credibly imagine and deliver. Explore emerging tools and platforms and test the ones worth testing. Raise technical fluency across the agency, including where AI adds value and where it does not. Grow a trusted network of specialists and bring new capabilities into pitches and new-business conversations. Success in This Role Success is shipped work, stronger decisions and client confidence. Creative teams pull you in early because you make ideas bigger, not smaller. Ambitious concepts become credible technical plans earlier. Prototypes lead cleanly into dependable production. Estimates and risks are clear before they become surprises. Each project leaves behind knowledge the agency can reuse. We sell and deliver work we could not a year ago. What You Bring Technical depth matters. Judgment matters more. Required Qualifications ~8+ years of relevant professional experience, including significant experience leading complex digital products, platforms or experiences in an agency, consultancy, studio or similarly client-facing environment. A strong record of shipping work across several relevant areas, such as generative AI, web applications, real-time 3D, game engines, branded gaming, augmented or virtual reality, spatial computing, connected installations or live experiential technology. Enough hands-on engineering fluency to evaluate architecture, code quality, APIs, cloud services, data flows, prototypes and delivery risk, and to know when deeper specialist expertise is needed. Experience leading blended teams of employees, contractors and specialist partners. Strong commercial judgment, with the ability to connect technical decisions to scope, timeline, budget, maintenance and client value. Clear, confident executive and client communication, particularly when the answer involves uncertainty, risk or tradeoffs. You do not need to be an expert in every technology listed above. We are looking for breadth, strong technical judgment and the ability to know when to go deep, when to learn and when to bring in the right specialist. How You Think You are curious without being distracted by novelty. You make the complicated understandable without oversimplifying it. You are comfortable moving between a whiteboard, a prototype, a client meeting and a production review. You know that responsible AI includes privacy, security, intellectual property, bias, transparency and human oversight. You invite creative ambition, then give it a path to become real. You care about craft, reliability and what happens after launch. Portfolio over pedigree. We care more about the decisions you made, the work you shipped and what you learned than a specific degree or a perfect checklist of tools. Travel Expectations St. Louis, Missouri is our home base, but this role can be based remotely from an eligible U.S. location. Travel is expected approximately 2–3 times per quarter for key client moments, internal collaboration and project needs. Additional travel may occasionally be required during onboarding or major project ramp-ups. Why Paradowski At Paradowski, craft and curiosity drive the work. You’ll collaborate across disciplines with people who care as much about how the work gets made as the final result, with room to grow, contribute a point of view and build a career alongside people who take the work seriously without taking themselves too seriously. Benefits Paradowski offers a comprehensive benefits package for eligible full-time employees, including multiple medical plan options, dental and vision coverage, a 401(k) with company match, paid time off, paid holidays and floating holidays, paid parental and birth recovery leave, employer-paid basic life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, and employee wellbeing and professional-development resources. Eligibility and coverage are subject to the applicable plan terms. Work Authorization Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. As a condition of employment, all new employees are required to complete the Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9) and provide documentation establishing identity and work authorization. Equal Opportunity Paradowski is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, sex or gender, including pregnancy, childbirth, pregnancy-related conditions and lactation, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, military service or veteran status, physical or mental disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. To Apply To apply, email your resume or LinkedIn profile, plus a portfolio or concise set of case studies, to using the subject line: Technical Director, AI & Immersive Experiences - [First Name] [Last Name] For each project, tell us what you owned, the hardest technical decision you made, how you worked with creative and client teams, and what ultimately shipped. Paradowski Creative