Head of Applied AI jobs in United States
cer-icon
Apply on Employer Site
company-logo

Catena Labs · 3 weeks ago

Head of Applied AI

positionUnited States
timeFull-time
remoteRemote
seniorityDirector/Executive
date10+ years exp

Catena Labs is building the first AI-native financial institution to provide essential services for AI systems in commerce. The Head of Applied AI will lead the AI Platform team, focusing on integrating AI into products and operations while overseeing the development of tools and frameworks for AI capabilities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)Information TechnologyInternet

Responsibilities

Own the orchestration layer connecting product experiences to banking infrastructure
Establish eval frameworks that prove our agents are reliable
Stay ahead of emerging agent protocols (A2A, x402, MCP, LangGraph) and integrate where it strengthens our infrastructure
Partner closely with Product Development and Banking Core to ensure AI capabilities are deeply integrated
Hire and develop AI engineers and data scientists as the team grows

Qualification

Production AI systemsModel selectionEval methodologyPythonTypeScriptAWSCloudFlareAgent orchestrationSecurity-mindedCompliance experienceRisk systems experienceHands-on codingComfortable with ambiguity

Required

Deep experience shipping production AI systems, whether that's a decade in ML or fewer years with intensive focus on the current LLM paradigm
You build things directly. You're not looking for a role where you manage without coding
Strong intuition for model selection, eval methodology, and build-vs-buy tradeoffs
Security-minded. You understand prompt injection, adversarial inputs, and why these matter more when money is involved
Comfortable with ambiguity, able to set direction while shipping

Preferred

Experience in fintech, payments, or regulated financial services
Hands-on work with agent orchestration frameworks
Background in compliance or risk systems where auditability matters

Company

Catena Labs

twittertwittertwitter
company-logo
Catena Labs incubate independent products spanning identity, communications, AI, and commerce.
dateFounded in 2022
location
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
people-size2-10 employees
web-link
https://catena.xyz/

Funding

Current Stage
Early Stage
Total Funding
$18M
Key Investors
a16z crypto
2025-05-20Seed· $18M
2023-11-08Seed

Leadership Team

leader-logo
Sharda Del Castillo
Chief Legal & Business Officer
linkedin

Recent News

Cointelegraph
Pantera, Coinbase back Surf’s $15M push to build crypto-native AI models
2025-12-11
CB Insights
The agentic commerce market map
2025-11-14
Business Wire
Catena Labs Expands Executive Team, Appoints Global Payments and Fintech Leader Sharda Caro Del Castillo as Chief Legal and Business Officer
2025-07-29
Company data provided by crunchbase