Director of AI Engineering

Apollo.io is the leading go-to-market solution for revenue teams, trusted by over 500,000 companies and millions of users globally, from rapidly growing startups to some of the world's largest enterprises. Founded in 2015, the company is one of the fastest growing companies in SaaS, raising approximately $250 million to date and valued at $1.6 billion. Apollo.io provides sales and marketing teams with easy access to verified contact data for over 210 million B2B contacts and 35 million companies worldwide, along with tools to engage and convert these contacts in one unified platform. By helping revenue professionals find the most accurate contact information and automating the outreach process, Apollo.io turns prospects into customers. Apollo raised a series D in 2023 and is backed by top-tier investors, including Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and more, and counts the former President and COO of Hubspot, JD Sherman, among its board members. Apollo.io is the AI-native GTM platform used by millions of professionals worldwide, helping revenue teams automate workflows, personalize outreach, and convert prospects into customers. Backed by Sequoia and Bain Capital and valued at $1.6B+, Apollo is one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the world, shipping AI-first capabilities across assistants, agentic automation, search, and generation at massive scale. We are entering a hyper-growth phase of AI innovation and are hiring a Director of AI Engineering to lead the strategy, engineering execution, and cross-functional integration of Apollo’s applied AI systems. Your Role & Mission As the Director of AI Engineering, you will own the end-to-end delivery of Apollo’s AI roadmap spanning autonomous agentic systems, LLM-powered workflows, search & relevance, personalization, and production-grade ML infrastructure. You will lead and scale a high-impact AI Engineering organization responsible for turning cutting-edge AI techniques into real, revenue-driving product capabilities used by millions. This role sits at the intersection of Engineering, Product, Machine Learning, Growth, and GTM, requiring deep technical leadership, exceptional product intuition, and a track record of shipping AI systems that create measurable business outcomes. You will define the long-term architecture for agentic AI at Apollo, elevate engineering excellence, mentor senior ICs and managers, and accelerate Apollo’s position as the AI-native leader in the go-to-market ecosystem. What You’ll Own & Deliver AI Systems Strategy & Roadmap Define the multi-year technical vision for Apollo’s AI stack, spanning agents, orchestration, inference, retrieval, and platformization. Prioritize high-impact AI investments by partnering with Product, Design, Research, and Data leaders to align engineering outcomes with business goals. Establish technical standards, evaluation criteria, and success metrics for every AI-powered feature shipped. Agentic Systems & Applied AI Delivery Lead the architecture and deployment of long-horizon autonomous agents, multi-agent workflows, and API-driven orchestration frameworks. Build reusable, scalable agentic components that power GTM workflows like research, enrichment, sequencing, lead scoring, routing, and personalization. Own the evolution of Apollo’s internal LLM platform for high-scale, low-latency, cost-optimized inference. AI Assistants, Search & Personalization Oversee model-driven experiences for natural-language interfaces, RAG pipelines, semantic search, personalized recommendations, and email intelligence. Partner with Product & Design to build intuitive conversational UX that hides underlying complexity while elevating user productivity. Experimentation, Evaluation & Observability Implement rigorous evaluation frameworks, including offline benchmarking, human-in-the-loop review, and online A/B experimentation. Ensure robust observability, monitoring, and safety guardrails for all AI systems in production. Drive continuous model improvement through telemetry, feedback loops, and data-driven performance tuning. Technical Leadership & Team Building Build and lead a world-class AI Engineering team of senior ICs, managers, and cross-functional collaborators. Foster a culture of experimentation, velocity, and pragmatic engineering, where speed and safety coexist. Mentor engineers on system design, LLM architectures, distributed systems, and applied ML best practices. Upskill the broader engineering org in AI-native development, tooling, and automation. Cross-Functional Impact & Execution Excellence Collaborate closely with Data Science, Product, Design, and Research teams to ensure AI capabilities integrate seamlessly into the GTM user journey. Accelerate learning cycles by combining LLM experimentation, product iteration, telemetry insights, and engineering automation. What We’re Looking For Technical & Production Expertise 10–15+ years in software engineering, with significant leadership experience owning AI/ML or applied LLM systems at scale. Proven history shipping LLM-powered features, agentic workflows, or AI assistants used by real customers in production. Deep understanding of LLM orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex), RAG pipelines, vector search, embeddings, and prompt engineering. Expert in backend & distributed systems (Python strongly preferred) and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP). Strong experience with telemetry, observability, and cost-aware real-time inference optimizations. Leadership, Strategy & Delivery Demonstrated ability to lead senior engineers, define technical roadmaps, and deliver outcomes aligned to business metrics. Experience building or scaling teams working on experimentation, optimization, personalization, or ML-powered growth systems. Exceptional ability to simplify complex problems, set clear standards, and drive alignment across Product, Data, Design, and Engineering. Strong product sense, ability to weigh novelty vs. impact, focus on user value, and prioritize speed with guardrails. AI-Native Engineering Mindset Fluent in integrating AI tools into engineering workflows for code generation, debugging, delivery velocity, and operational efficiency. Comfortable balancing rapid experimentation with production rigor, ensuring features are safe, reliable, and measurable. Thrives in an environment where learning velocity, automation, and continuous improvement are core values. What Will Make You Successful at Apollo You raise the bar on engineering leadership — setting standards that elevate execution, quality, and innovation across the org. You operate with ownership and urgency. Apollo ships fast, iterates fast, and expects leaders to turn ambiguity into scalable systems. You connect AI research to real product outcomes. Novelty matters less than moving business metrics materially. You excel cross-functionally. You influence Product, Desig, and Data with clarity, technical depth, and pragmatic decision-making. You thrive in AI-native environments. You use AI daily to accelerate engineering, improve workflows, and teach your teams to do the same.   #LI-SD1The listed Pay Range reflects the total cash compensation inclusive of annual base salary and annual bonus as applicable. For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonus target and annual base salary for the role. This salary range may be inclusive of several career levels at Apollo and will be narrowed during the interview process based on a number of factors, including the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and location. Applicants interested in this role who are not located in the US may request the annual salary range for their location during the interview process. Additional benefits for this role may include: equity; company bonus or sales commissions/bonuses; 401(k) plan; at least 10 paid holidays per year, flex PTO, and parental leave; employee assistance program and wellbeing benefits; global travel coverage; life/AD&D/STD/LTD insurance; FSA/HSA and medical, dental, and vision benefits.Annual Pay Range$300,000—$450,000 USDWe are AI Native Apollo.io is an AI-native company built on a culture of continuous improvement. We’re on the front lines of driving productivity for our customers—and we expect the same mindset from our team. If you're energized by finding smarter, faster ways to get things done using AI and automation, you'll thrive here. Why You’ll Love Working at Apollo At Apollo, we’re driven by a shared mission: to help our customers unlock their full revenue potential. That’s why we take extreme ownership of our work, move with focus and urgency, and learn voraciously to stay ahead. We invest deeply in your growth, ensuring you have the resources, support, and autonomy to own your role and make a real impact. Collaboration is at our core—we’re all for one, meaning you’ll have a team across departments ready to help you succeed. We encourage bold ideas and courageous action, giving you the freedom to experiment, take smart risks, and drive big wins. If you’re looking for a place where your work matters, where you can push boundaries, and where your career can thrive—Apollo is the place for you.  Learn more here!