About this role
Leading the Applied AI Architects involves managing a forward-deployed technical team that embeds with business units to build working agents and shared infrastructure. You will split your time between hands-on building, system design reviews, and leading a senior group of individual contributors operating across go-to-market and general administration tracks.
Braze is making artificial intelligence the default way of working across the company, requiring this leader to define a newly minted role category and manage an ongoing portfolio of engagements. You will negotiate priorities with executive leadership, enforce strict engagement lifecycles, and measure outcomes against business metrics like sales ramp time and competitive win rates.
An ideal candidate is a zero-to-one builder and experienced manager who combines technical depth in modern AI tooling with the executive presence needed to navigate complex commercial environments. You should be comfortable operating in a fast-moving, high-accountability culture where adoption and measurable workflow improvements are the primary bars for success.
What you will do
- Manage the hiring, onboarding, development, and performance of senior technical individual contributors across GTM and G&A tracks.
- Own the engagement portfolio by deciding where architects embed, prioritizing workloads, and balancing permanent surface ownership against rotational engagements.
- Deliver and measure committed business bets that pair outcomes like sales ramp time and quota capacity with leading indicators.
- Enforce operational discipline through a strict engagement lifecycle from discovery and design to build, delivery, and monitoring.
- Maintain hands-on technical credibility by reviewing agent designs and carrying a personal build surface.
- Partner with product and platform teams to transition field-proven patterns into shared infrastructure.
- Serve as the executive interface who negotiates embed agreements with senior leadership and protects team focus.
- Document successful practices internally to establish organizational playbooks for applied AI delivery.
What you need
- Bring 10 or more years of professional experience spanning GTM-adjacent technical work and hands-on building.
- Accumulate at least 3 years of experience leading senior individual contributors with a track record of development and retention.
- Demonstrate hands-on experience building AI-powered tools, agents, or workflows that transformed real business operations.
- Provide a proven track record of standing up a new team, practice, or function and scaling it beyond personal capacity.
- Demonstrate executive-level communication and stakeholder management capabilities, including priority negotiation with senior leaders.
- Show experience defining and defending business-impact measurement frameworks for a technical team.
Nice to have
- Led forward-deployed engineering or applied AI teams at a model lab, AI-native company, or scaled enterprise SaaS business.
- Shipped solutions using modern agentic tooling and enterprise GTM stacks like Salesforce, Gong, Slack, and Snowflake.
- Ran engagement- or rotation-based operating models such as consulting, embedded product teams, or customer zero programs.
- Hired for hard-to-define roles and built interview systems that successfully predicted performance.
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What does the Applied AI Architects team actually do?
Applied AI Architects are forward-deployed practitioners who combine domain judgment with hands-on build capability. They embed with business teams, treat employees as users, and ship working agents on shared infrastructure.
How is the team structured operationally?
The function runs in two tracks. GTM Architects are permanently embedded in the go-to-market organization across the customer lifecycle, while G&A Architects rotate across corporate functions like Finance, People, Legal, and Operations.
Is this a hands-on technical role or purely a management position?
This is a player-coach role where you will carry enough build and field surface to keep your judgment current. Your primary output remains the team, but you also review agent designs and maintain your own build surface.
What are the key performance metrics for the team's work?
Every bet pairs a business outcome with leading indicators. Committed bets read out in business metrics like sales ramp time, quota capacity, and competitive win rate.