Principal AI Engineer

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. 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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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).
• 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.
AI-Native Engineering Mindset
Fluent in integrating AI tools into engineering workflows for code generation, debugging, delivery velocity, and operational efficiency.
Thrives in an environment where learning velocity, automation, and continuous improvement are core values.

You raise the bar on engineering leadership — setting standards that elevate execution, quality, and innovation across the org.
Apollo ships fast, iterates fast, and expects leaders to turn ambiguity into scalable systems.
You connect AI research to real product outcomes. 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.

The listed Pay Range reflects base salary range, except for sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ('OTE') range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commission/sales bonus targets and annual base salary for the role. Additional benefits for this role may include equity; company bonus or sales commissions/bonuses; at least 10 paid holidays per year, flex PTO, and parental leave; employee assistance program and wellbeing benefits; global travel coverage; FSA/HSA and medical, dental, and vision benefits.