climb-ai - Forward Deployed AI Lead
Requirements
• 10+ years of software development or technical architecture experience across varied stacks, including cloud environments. • 3+ years in engineering leadership, technical consulting, solutions architecture, or a combination. • Hands-on familiarity with modern AI engineering workflows, development and agentic tooling (e.g., Claude Code or equivalent), enough to set technical direction and direct an engineer's work credibly. • Experience designing or advising on AI operating models, technology adoption strategies, or transformation programs. • Demonstrated ability to engage across lines of business: you can talk CI/CD with a VP of Engineering and operational efficiency with a COO in the same week. • Strong executive communication: writing and presenting to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and line-of-business leaders. • Demonstrated ownership of enterprise consulting engagements, including executive stakeholders, scope, delivery quality, and commercial outcomes. • Hands-on experience with Databricks (Mosaic AI, Unity Catalog, model serving) is a strong plus. • Direct experience building or operating agentic AI systems in production. • LLM prompt engineering, RAG architecture, or AI product development experience. • Familiarity with PE portfolio-company environments and board-level communication. • Experience designing AI governance and adoption guardrails for enterprise organizations. • Note on certification: Databricks experience is valued but not required at hire. Both Databricks and Anthropic certification are expected to be obtained post-hire. • You naturally take ownership of entire engagements, bringing technical teams, executive stakeholders, and business objectives together around a common outcome. • You earn trust with executives because you connect technical decisions to measurable business value. • You know when to dive into architecture, when to coach the team, and when to challenge the customer's assumptions. • You recognize delivery, organizational, and commercial risks early and address them before they become problems.
Responsibilities
• Own the success of AI transformation engagements from discovery through executive handoff, aligning customer outcomes, technical direction, delivery execution, scope, and long-term partnership into a single engagement plan. • Run structured discovery across engineering, product, and business stakeholders to map context, AI readiness, and where AI changes the economics. • Design target architectures and AI operating models that define how the organization adopts, governs, and scales AI in production. • Define the enterprise AI strategy and operating model that guide architectural decisions, delivery priorities, governance, and long-term AI adoption. • Set strategic and technical direction across architecture, data readiness, AI adoption, governance, and delivery priorities. • Provide hands-on technical leadership when critical architectural or delivery challenges require it. • Build executive relationships that position Climb as a long-term AI partner, not a one-time vendor. • Shape follow-on scope throughout delivery; by handoff, you have a credible hypothesis for the next engagement and can present it. • Surface expansion signals across lines of business and route them to the account team. • Improve delivery frameworks based on engagement experience. • Mentor Architects and FDEs on architecture, executive engagement, and the architect-engineer delivery model.
Benefits
• Ground floor, real backing. You are joining early, with founders who have built and exited firms like this before. You help write the playbook rather than inherit one. • Outcomes, not hours. We sell and deliver against business results. Advancement is tied to delivery performance and account impact, not utilization targets. • Senior team, no body-shop drag. Small pods of A-players, heavy internal AI leverage, and no bloated middle layers between you and the work. • IP that compounds. Every engagement feeds reusable accelerators, patterns, and points of view back into the practice. • Define the methodology. You shape how AI transformation gets scoped and delivered at Climb. Every engagement you run improves the next. • Competitive base salary with performance-based bonuses • MacBook Pro and swag kit so you can do your best work • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance • Generous holidays, flexible PTO, and remote-first work environment • Professional development budget including Databricks and cloud certifications • Spot bonuses for relevant certifications • Conference attendance and thought leadership opportunities • Collaborative, low-ego culture with direct access to leadership • Opportunity to shape a growing practice from the ground floor
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