Director, AI Architecture & Agent Platform

Who We Are:

Director, AI Architecture & Agent Platform

Business Unit: TKO Group Holdings
Location: US-based; hybrid preferred, aligned to executive cadence
Reports To: SVP, AI & Data Transformation

Position Summary

TKO Group Holdings, the parent of UFC, WWE, IMG, On Location and PBR, is deploying AI across multiple business units and a growing number of platforms.

The Director, AI Architecture & Agent Platform sets TKO's technical architecture for agents and AI platforms. This role determines how agents are designed, connected, evaluated, secured, observed and operated across TKO. It owns the technical point of view on orchestration, reusability, interoperability and platform choice, including where TKO should build, buy, use a platform-native capability or use an independent layer.

The role validates the architecture through targeted reference builds, including the first cross-system agent taken to production, then enables engineering and business-unit teams to deliver against reusable standards. It is not a central application delivery role or a high-volume build service.

This is an architecture-led individual-contributor role. It requires enough hands-on depth to prototype critical paths and challenge technical claims, along with the judgment and influence to guide work through teams that do not report to this role.

Responsibilities

1. Agentic Harness and Orchestration Architecture

• Own TKO's technical point of view on where orchestration and reusability should sit, including build versus buy and platform-native versus independent options.
• Define what each option requires, what it forecloses, and how agents built on different platforms will interoperate.
• Lead the TKO-side answer to the initial orchestration assessment, working with an external partner while challenging the analysis and making the recommendation.
• Define portability and migration criteria for platform-specific agents, including how TKO separates business logic, prompts, tools, identity, data access and evaluation from any one platform. Establish a path to rehost or retire agents built on IBM Watson, Salesforce or other platforms when warranted.
• Establish the architecture principles and decision records that keep the agent platform coherent as the estate grows.

2. Reference Architecture and Technical Validation

• Lead the architecture and technical direction for the first cross-system agent built through the new standard and taken to production.
• Personally prototype or implement the critical parts needed to validate the architecture, then partner with delivery teams on the broader build.
• Produce the templates, reusable components and engineering patterns that later builds will use.
• Make the first-of-a-kind patterns real without becoming the long-term application owner or central delivery team for every use case.

3. Technical Evaluation, Estimation and Portfolio Input

• Assess AI tooling and proposed solutions on technical merit at a level that can withstand challenge from engineers and vendors.
• Provide architecture, feasibility, effort, total-cost and technical-risk input into portfolio prioritization.
• Write technical assessments that make vendor claims, dependencies, limitations and tradeoffs explicit.
• Identify when a capability should be adopted, piloted, built, deferred or retired.

4. AI Engineering Standards, Guardrails and Sandboxes

• Define what must be true before an agent reaches production, including identity and access, evaluation and regression testing, observability, cost controls and failure handling.
• Define standards for agents that take consequential actions, including payments or writes to source systems: authorization, human approval, segregation of duties, transaction limits, audit trails, idempotency, rollback and failure handling, data protection and testing. Own the AI architecture standard while platform, payment, security and business owners retain responsibility for their underlying controls.
• Design and operate controlled sandboxes for emerging models and tools, including video-gen models such as Seedance. Give teams a safe way to test approved use cases without exposing TKO data, talent likeness, intellectual property or production systems.
• Advise Engineering teams adopting tools such as Claude Code on repository and data access, secrets, code review, testing, dependency and intellectual-property controls, logging, cost limits and approved use.
• Serve as the technical counterpart to Cybersecurity and other functions adopting AI tools. Help assess proposed uses, define safe operating practices, capture reusable patterns and align local decisions with TKO's enterprise architecture and guardrails.
• Set the access controls, logging, spend limits, data and content rules, evaluation requirements and path to production or shutdown for those sandboxes.
• Maintain an architecture decision and exception process: document the standard, approve deviations with named owners and expiry dates, and escalate unresolved cross-functional decisions with a recommendation.
• Define the production lifecycle for agents and AI tools, including incident response, provider outages, model and version changes, material regressions and retirement, with clear handoffs to IT, Cybersecurity and business owners.

Role Boundaries

• This role owns TKO's AI architecture, technical standards, reference patterns and architecture decisions.
• Platform owners and Engineering own implementation and operation of their platforms. IT owns infrastructure, provisioning and service delivery.
• Cybersecurity, Legal, Finance and Privacy retain ownership of their underlying controls and approvals. This role provides the AI-specific architecture and technical standard they apply.
• Business units own local use cases, adoption and business outcomes. This role helps them use common patterns and decides when a local solution should become an enterprise pattern.

The Person (Qualifications)

Required Qualifications

• Experience architecting and operating agentic systems in production, not just prototypes, with a clear understanding of what failed, why it failed and how it was fixed.
• Hands-on experience with orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph or LangChain, Model Context Protocol (MCP), tool-calling patterns and retrieval architectures.
• Experience designing identity and access for non-human actors, including service accounts, delegated identity and role-based agent identity.
• Experience evaluating non-deterministic systems, including test-set design, regression testing, quality gates and launch-readiness decisions.
• Experience designing observability and cost controls for token-priced environments.
• Experience designing controlled sandboxes or evaluation environments for emerging AI tools, with access controls, logging, data and intellectual-property restrictions and spend limits.
• Security architecture literacy sufficient to be a credible counterpart to a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) organisation.
• Ability to write a technical assessment that engineers and vendors cannot bluff past.
• Experience setting standards for AI systems that take actions in enterprise systems, including authorization, approval, auditability and failure recovery.
• Experience advising technical teams on the secure adoption of AI developer tools and specialist AI platforms.
• Ability to act as the senior technical voice in the room, prototype critical paths when needed and deliver through engineering and business-unit teams.

Not Required

• Model training or fine-tuning depth
• Data platform or pipeline engineering experience
• Owning ongoing feature delivery for business applications
• Experience managing a large engineering organisation

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience setting architecture standards, reference patterns or technical governance in a complex, matrixed organization.
• Experience working across multiple business units or brands with different platforms, data boundaries and operating practices.
• Experience in sports, media, entertainment, hospitality or live events, or with organizations managing large content libraries, talent data and fan-facing products.

Leadership Attributes

• Opinionated and decisive: makes the technical call, explains the tradeoffs and owns the recommendation.
• Systems thinker: designs durable patterns that work across platforms rather than solving one use case at a time.
• Earned authority: influences senior engineers, security leaders, vendors and business stakeholders without relying on direct reporting lines.
• Low ego, high standards: challenges weak technical reasoning while working constructively with partner teams.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: builds the architecture and operating standards as AI scales rather than waiting for a finished model.
• Every AI portfolio decision has clear technical input on architecture, feasibility, effort, total cost and technical risk.

Per local requirements and in the interest of transparency, the hourly rate shown below reflects the prevalent current hiring range for this position. Hiring pay rates are based on a number of factors, including location and may vary depending on job-related qualifications, knowledge, skills and experience. The company strives to provide locally competitive rewards packages, which include base rate along with, as applicable, short- and long-term incentives, growth and developmental opportunities, and robust benefits, such as health care, retirement, vacation and other paid time off, and additional offerings.

Hiring Rate Minimum:

Hiring Rate Maximum:

TKO is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws regarding non-discrimination in employment. TKO makes employment decisions based on merit and qualifications, without considering an employee’s or applicant’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any other basis prohibited under federal, state or local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the Company has facilities. TKO also provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and applicable state or local laws. For information about Privacy and Information Security for TKO employment candidates, please review our Privacy Policy. For information regarding Terms of Use for this and other TKO websites, please review our Terms of Use.

About TKO

TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TKO) is a premium sports and entertainment company. TKO owns iconic properties including UFC, the world’s premier mixed martial arts organization; WWE, the global leader in sports entertainment; and PBR, the world’s premier bull riding organization. Together, these properties reach 1 billion households across 210 countries and territories and organize more than 500 live events year-round, attracting more than three million fans. TKO also services and partners with major sports rights holders through IMG, an industry-leading global sports marketing agency; and On Location, a global leader in premium experiential hospitality.

About WWE

WWE® is an integrated media organization and the recognized global leader in sports entertainment. The company consists of a portfolio of businesses that create and deliver original content 52 weeks a year to a global audience. WWE is committed to family-friendly entertainment on its television programming, premium live events, digital media, and publishing platforms. WWE’s TV-PG programming can be seen in more than 1 billion households worldwide in more than 20 languages through world-class distribution partners including NBCUniversal, The CW and Netflix. In the United States, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock, is the exclusive home to all premium live events, a variety of original programming and a massive video-on-demand library. Netflix is the exclusive home for WWE programming around the world, other than select international markets. WWE is part of TKO Group Holdings (NYSE: TKO). Additional information on WWE can be found at wwe.com and corporate.wwe.com.

About UFC

UFC® is the world’s premier mixed martial arts organization (MMA), with more than 700 million fans and approximately 290 million social media followers. The organization produces more than 40 live events annually in some of the most prestigious arenas around the world while broadcasting to over 975 million households across more than 170 countries. UFC’s athlete roster features the world’s best MMA athletes representing more than 80 countries. The organization’s digital offerings include UFC FIGHT PASS®, one of the world’s leading streaming services for combat sports. UFC is part of TKO Group Holdings (NYSE: TKO) and is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information, visit UFC.com and follow UFC at Facebook.com/UFC and @UFC on X, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok: @UFC.

About IMG

IMG is a leading global sports marketing agency, specializing in media rights management and sales, multi-channel content production and distribution, brand partnerships, strategic consulting, digital services, and events management. It powers growth of revenues, fanbases and IP for more than 200 federations, associations, events, and teams, including the National Football League, English Premier League, International Olympic Committee, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, ATP and WTA Tours, the AELTC (Wimbledon), Euroleague Basketball, CONMEBOL, DP World Tour, and The R&A, as well as UFC, WWE, and PBR. IMG is a subsidiary of TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TKO), a premium sports and entertainment company.

About PBR

PBR is the world’s premier bull riding organization. More than 1,000 bull riders compete in more than 200 events annually across the televised PBR Unleash The Beast tour (UTB), which features the top bull riders in the world; the PBR Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour (PWVT); the PBR Touring Pro Division (TPD); and the PBR’s international circuits in Australia, Brazil, and Canada. In 2022, PBR launched the nationally televised PBR Teams league—eight teams of the world’s best bull riders competing for a new championship expanding to 10 teams in 2024—as well as the PBR Challenger Series with more than 60 annual events nationwide. The organization’s digital assets include PBR RidePass on Pluto TV, which is home to Western sports. PBR is a subsidiary of TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TKO), a premium sports and entertainment company. For more information, visit PBR.com, or follow on Facebook at Facebook.com/PBR, X at X.com/PBR, and YouTube at YouTube.com/PBR.

About On Location

On Location is a global leader in premium experiential hospitality, offering ticketing, curated guest experiences, live event production and travel management across sports, entertainment, fashion and culture. On Location provides unrivaled access for corporate clients and fans looking for official, immersive experiences at marquee events, including the Olympic and Paralympic Games, FIFA World Cup 2026, Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, and more. An official partner and/or service provider to over 150 iconic rights holders, such as the IOC (the Milano Cortina 2026 and Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games), FIFA, NFL, NCAA, UFC, WWE, and PGA of America, the company also owns and operates a number of its own unique experiences. On Location is a subsidiary of TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TKO), a premium sports and entertainment company.

About Zuffa Boxing

Zuffa Boxing is a joint venture between TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (“TKO”) (NYSE: TKO) and Sela, the entertainment conglomerate. TKO serves as managing partner, providing day-to-day operational expertise, management, and oversight of the promotion, with executive leadership anchored by UFC President and CEO Dana White and WWE President and TKO Board Member Nick Khan. The promotion aims to reimagine the sport of boxing by evolving the current model to restore the sport’s rightful place in the forefront of the global sports ecosystem. For more information, follow @Zuffa_Boxing on X; and @ZuffaBoxing on Snapchat, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok.