Director of AI Innovation & Enablement

About Ars X Machina

As a 2026 AdAge Best Places to Work company, Ars X Machina (AXM) is a full-service media planning, buying, and analytics agency headquartered in San Francisco, with a remote team distributed across the U.S. We craft omnichannel, data-driven media strategies that span the entire paid media landscape. From audience development and strategic planning to budget forecasting, execution, optimization, and reporting, we manage the full media lifecycle end-to-end. Our experience spans both B2B and B2C, supporting brand-building and performance-driven campaigns.

What sets AXM apart? Our agility, strategic leadership, and innovative mindset, all rooted in a collaborative, people-first culture where both clients and team members thrive.

As Director of AI Innovation & Enablement, you’ll help lead Ars X Machina’s evolution from an AI-enabled agency to an AI-native one, where teams can securely query approved knowledge and data, automate work, and turn answers into better decisions and new ideas. You’ll evolve our current AI capabilities and lead the architecture that helps teams find efficiencies across paid media planning, activation, measurement, and operations, giving people more time to execute the highest-value work. Those same capabilities will drive innovation through sharper strategies, new services, and proprietary solutions for clients.

This is a hands-on role. You’ll evaluate technology, configure AI assistants and agents, build automations, connect approved knowledge and data, and test outputs across approved AI platforms and systems. You’ll make those capabilities useful to teams through role-specific training, coaching, office hours, and playbooks grounded in real work, helping employees combine marketing expertise, AI, data, automation, and human judgment.

Working with the Leadership team, you’ll lead one AI roadmap across Media Planning & Investment, Analytics & Data Science, and Operations. You’ll use an Agile approach to prioritize initiatives, build and test with teams, learn quickly, and scale what works. You’ll guide responsible use and investment decisions while driving proven ideas into daily practice. Success will show up in stronger employee skills, sustained adoption, faster and higher-quality work, and new value clients can see.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Own a focused AI strategy and roadmap

• Translate agency and client priorities into a focused AI portfolio using Agile Scrum. Evaluate emerging AI, agentic, automation, martech, and data capabilities; separate practical opportunities from hype and recommend where AXM should experiment, invest, partner, or develop new capabilities.
• Manage intake, prioritization, pilots, rollout, measurement, and maintenance. Recommend platforms, investments, and sequencing, deciding what to test, scale, defer, or stop.

Design and validate AI workflows

• Partner with Media Planning & Investment, Analytics & Data Science, and Operations to identify recurring work and test approved AI workflows for new business development, research, campaign builds, trafficking, pacing, optimizations, and reporting. Scale concepts across the agency after team validation of quality, usefulness, and risk.
• Identify opportunities for agents to coordinate multi-step media, measurement, and operational workflows across agency teams. Define autonomy limits, required human oversight, and standards for testing, monitoring, and maintaining agent-driven work.

Evolve, build, and scale AXM’s AI portfolio

• Build and maintain approved assistants, agents, and automations, with clear ownership, support, and cost controls.
• Make approved AXM knowledge and client data securely queryable, with appropriate permissions and answer validation.
• Partner with Leadership and the AXM client facing team to apply proven AI capabilities to client challenges and develop sharper strategies, new services, and proprietary solutions.

Drive adoption and develop a workforce of marketing technologists

• Provide hands-on training, office hours, and playbooks that help teams apply AI to their daily work. Partner with Managers and AI champions to remove barriers, set adoption goals, and track sustained use.
• Build role-based AI learning paths for onboarding and development, covering workflow design, automation, output evaluation, and peer coaching through real client work.

Protect quality, client data, and responsible use

• Work with Operations and IT to protect company and client data and keep AI outputs reliable. Check answers against their sources, verify calculations, and retest after updates.

Measure value

• Track verified adoption, quality, build time, and net business value against baselines.

REQUIREMENTS

• Experience: 5+ years in marketing technology, analytics, operations, consulting, or equivalent relevant work. Strong understanding of paid media and agency workflows, preferably gained at an ad agency. Demonstrated success rolling out AI or automation with teams, with measurable gains in adoption, quality, efficiency, or client value.
• Technical Skills: Hands-on proficiency with AI platforms, including assistants, agents, automations, knowledge sources, workflows, and output evaluation. Familiarity with APIs, data structures, and low-code automation is highly preferred. Scripting or coding experience to prototype automations and troubleshoot integrations is a plus, as is experience with Agile or Scrum.
• Soft Skills: Strong communication, training, facilitation, and stakeholder management. Ability to explain technical concepts across differing skill levels, build trust, secure leadership commitments, and develop role-based learning paths and AI champions.
• Other Requirements: Ability to prioritize initiatives, meet deadlines, and measure value. Sound judgment on confidentiality, security, permissions, and human oversight; discipline to document, maintain, simplify, and retire ineffective workflows.

Production software engineering, model training, and a computer-science degree are not prerequisites.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by individuals assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and skills required.

***WE ARE AN AT-WILL, EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER***