Role OverviewAs Head of AI, you will be the primary technical driver of all AI/ML initiatives. You''ll report directly to the CEO/CTO and own the full life cycle of our AI roadmap-from research and proof-of-concept to scalable production. We''re looking for a doer who can rapidly prototype models, optimize for performance, and mentor junior engineers, all while helping define product strategy. In this role, you will: Lead AI strategy and execution in a high-ambiguity environment. Build, train, and deploy state-of-the-art models (eg, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, or relevant domain-specific architectures). Design infrastructure for data ingestion, annotation, experimentation, model versioning, and monitoring. Collaborate closely with product, design, and DevOps to integrate AI features into our platform. Continuously evaluate new research, open-source tools, and emerging frameworks to keep us at the forefront. Recruit, mentor, and grow an AI/ML team as we scale beyond our seed round.Key Responsibilities1. Architecture and Hands-On Development Define and implement end-to-end AI pipelines: data collection/cleaning, feature engineering, model training, validation, and inference. Rapidly prototype novel models (eg, neural networks, probabilistic models) using PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or equivalent. Productionize models in cloud/on-prem environments (AWS/GCP/Azure) with containerization (Docker/Kubernetes) and ensure low-latency, high-availability in