kadence · 1 day ago
Head of Applied AI
LA Metro Area
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/Executive
8+ years expKadence is a stealth AI startup at the intersection of filmmaking and advanced machine learning, preparing for rapid expansion in its engineering and applied AI teams. The Head of Applied AI will lead the engineering organization in building next-generation generative AI products and will oversee product engineering, applied AI integration, platform reliability, and team growth.
Staffing & Recruiting
Hiring Manager
Aaron Chan
Responsibilities
Lead the process of integrating research models into production systems, including:
Deployment strategies
Roll-out and iteration
Monitoring, evaluation, and performance tracking
Own production readiness and reliability of deployed ML models
Design and build end-to-end ML infrastructure and pipelines that:
Interface closely with research teams
Support experimentation → production workflows
Architect systems from zero to one, not just incremental improvements
Model optimization (latency, throughput, cost)
Fine-tuning and post-training workflows
Build and maintain data and training pipelines that directly support these efforts
Model serving infrastructure
Backend integrations with existing products and services
Observability, logging, and feedback loops for deployed models
Drive continuous improvement of deployed models through monitoring and iteration
Act as the applied AI lead between research and engineering
Provide technical leadership to ML engineers and partner closely with researchers
Set standards and best practices for production ML systems
Qualification
Required
Proven end-to-end ownership of shipping research ML models into production, including deployment, monitoring, iteration, and long-term reliability in real-world systems
Deep hands-on expertise in applied ML infrastructure, including model serving, MLOps, production pipelines, and performance optimization in distributed, cloud-based environments
Strong systems design capability, able to architect and whiteboard scalable ML systems and take platforms from zero to one and beyond
Senior technical leadership experience, with a track record of leading ML or platform engineering initiatives, mentoring engineers, and scaling high-impact teams
Extensive production engineering background (8+ years) shipping complex, real-time, or high-traffic products, with a strong grasp of distributed systems and cloud architecture
Applied AI focus (not research-only), with hands-on experience integrating deep learning models into products and collaborating with research and creative stakeholders
Preferred
Experience with generative AI or computer vision strongly preferred
Company
kadence
Kadence - We place elite AI talent at the intersection of science & engineering, from PHD to Executive.
2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageCompany data provided by crunchbase