AI Innovation Engineer

As AI Innovation Engineer at 829, you'll work across the organization — partnering with VPs, directors, sales leadership, and subject matter experts — to drive operational excellence through AI-native tools and workflows. Your work directly impacts the team's ability to deliver cutting-edge services to clients, building technology with real impact internally and externally.

** This is not a traditional AI strategy role. ** You'll write Python, build agentic workflows, ship MCP integrations, and use coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) as daily workflow. We're hiring a builder/coach who ships production AI work and earns adoption from subject matter experts. We are not hiring a strategist who delegates implementation, an AI evangelist without an operating record, or a researcher whose work doesn't practically reach the operating teams that need it.

This is a foundational role reporting directly to the President/COO. You'll have autonomy on execution, ownership of 829's AI stack and skill library, and workflow architecture. You must be comfortable being scrappy, resourceful, and hands-on, while also operating cross-functionally to influence the broader organization.

What Success Looks Like 6 Months:

• You’ve established a draft playbook around agentic workflow development inclusive of testing, implementation and adoption.

• You’ve successfully crafted 3 - 5 workflows that have met adoption criteria.

• You are able to quantify the success of 1 - 2 workflows through quantitative and qualitative data.

• You have crafted a system to catalogue workflows, skills, and AI tools that enables shorter time-to-value and reduces sprawl.

• Your peers, colleagues and 829’s Leadership Team regularly seek your counsel in relation to AI Service Enablement.

12 Months:

• You have a pressure-tested playbook that details the agentic workflow implementation process and ongoing management.

• You have established a framework for evaluating the performance of workflows.

• You have integrated multiple workflows into a custom frontend in coordination with 829’s Head of Apollo and Engineering Resources.

• You have supported the growth of the innovation function as a center of excellence and / or an extension of 829’s Data Platform, Apollo.

Responsibilities and Duties

Workflow & Agentic Engineering (60%) Architect and build proprietary AI agents and automation workflows. Using company-specific data to drive defensible competitive advantage.

• Playbook: Develop and manage a playbook that includes discovery, pilot, improvement, implementation, adoption and measurement phases to execute work.

• Pilots & Proof of Concept: Lead pilots across multiple disciplines to test approaches and technology, using results to inform production workflows and gain buy-in.

• Integrations & Data Pipelines: Develop and maintain integrations between AI tools and core business systems and advertising platforms, including API builds, validation frameworks, and data pipelines.

• SME Collaboration: Collaborate closely with subject matter experts to ensure solutions and workflows deliver value, enable team members to produce their best work, are usable, and access that appropriate data.

• Leadership Collaboration: Collaborate with senior leaders to ensure that workflows accomplish desired strategic and quality objectives.

• Adoption & Enablement: Ensure that workflows and systems are consistently improved and adopted through systems and cadences that check outputs, measure progress towards goals, and revisit training and adoption mechanisms.

AI Stack Curation / Governance / Documentation (15%)

Own the substrate of 829’s AI Innovation Initiatives.

• AI Stack Documentation: Build and maintain 829's AI stack — tool inventory, vendor strategy, build-vs-buy posture, integration map, and shared-context architecture.

• Skill Library: Develop reusable patterns, agentic workflows, and MCP integrations that provide strategic value and compound across workflows.

• Build vs. Buy: Consult on agency decisions to build workflows and tools vs. buy point solutions to achieve objectives.

General Enablement & Service-Model Translation (25%)

Guide and advise a technically competent team of marketing professionals to achieve shared objectives.

• Internal Enablement: Run lightweight internal training, Office Hours, and troubleshooting clinics to upskill team members on AI-augmented work.

• Service-Model Translation: Advise/consult on revised service-model artifacts: scope-of-work content, pricing implications, policies, and marketing collateral.

• Compliance & AI Policy: Advise and actively contribute to AI policies designed to encourage and enable use, establish SOPs, and mitigate risk to clients, staff, and the business.

Qualifications and Skills

Must Haves:

• 5+ years of professional experience with at least 2 years of exposure in the marketing / agency space.

• Engineering foundation strong enough to evaluate tools, build agentic workflows, ship MCP integrations, and use coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) as daily workflow.

• Working knowledge of security and performance best practices in traditional software and agentic environments.

• Hands-on fluency with Python and at least one of TypeScript, SQL, or relevant scripting environments.

• Systems thinking: ability to map a business workflow end-to-end and identify where AI creates leverage

• Comfort with ambiguity; you diagnose problems, propose solutions, and move without being told exactly what to build

• Demonstrated track record of shipping production AI work that earned adoption — used, not demoed-and-shelved.

• Strong written and verbal communication; can explain technical architecture to a non-technical executive and translate strategic intent into a shipped workflow.

• Demonstrated success in influence-without-authority scenarios in which your work has driven outcomes.

Nice to Haves:

• Experience with React/Node and custom front-end applicati