Applied AI Lead

About the role

Owner is building the AI-native system for local businesses, starting with restaurants. This role will identify and drive the most impactful AI opportunities across the company. You will be responsible for scoping, building, and shipping AI-driven solutions that directly improve business outcomes. In this capacity, you will define the technical and product boundaries for high-leverage artificial intelligence initiatives. You will act as the primary architect for turning vague organizational needs into concrete AI capabilities. Your work will establish the standard for how rigorously measured experiments validate AI hypotheses. You will ensure that every solution deployed is aligned with the core economic drivers of the business.

Key facts

What you'll do

• Discover and define high-impact AI initiatives by analyzing business operations and identifying areas for improvement.
• Quantify the potential value of proposed AI solutions before development begins.
• Develop and deploy AI-powered tools and features, taking ownership from conception through to iteration and adoption.
• Partner with various teams to integrate AI solutions and ensure they deliver measurable business results.
• Design and run controlled experiments to measure the true impact of AI features on key business metrics.
• Translate ambiguous business problems into well-defined technical challenges suitable for machine learning approaches.
• Maintain a sharp focus on return on investment, prioritizing projects based on potential value and implementation cost.
• Build scalable infrastructure patterns that allow AI models to be reliably served in production environments.
• Establish documentation and knowledge transfer practices to ensure continuity as the AI portfolio grows.
• Mentor junior engineers on best practices for prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, and model optimization.
• Liaise with data teams to ensure the availability and quality of datasets required for model training and validation.
• Evaluate emerging AI tools and techniques to determine their applicability to the company's specific operational needs.
• Drive the adoption of standardized evaluation methodologies for assessing model performance and business impact.
• Act as the central point of ownership for the end-to-end lifecycle of applied AI projects.

Requirements

• A proven ability to identify significant business challenges and prioritize solutions without a predefined roadmap.
• Demonstrated skill in understanding the root causes of problems rather than just their surface symptoms.
• At least 3 years of experience in a 0-1 operational or startup environment.
• Hands-on experience building with Large Language Models (LLMs), including integrating models and APIs for applications like agents, assistants, structured output, evaluations, and context engineering.
• Ability to translate abstract concepts into functional code.
• Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-paced startup settings with tight deadlines.
• Proficiency in transforming ambiguity into a clear, prioritized plan of action.
• A commitment to seeing projects through to tangible impact, including post-deployment monitoring and iteration.
• Strong communication skills to explain complex technical ideas to diverse audiences.
• A track record of making sound technical decisions with incomplete information.
• Willingness to dive into details while maintaining a strategic overview of the project landscape.
• Capacity to manage multiple competing priorities and deliver results in a dynamic environment.
• Understanding of software engineering fundamentals such as version control, testing, and deployment pipelines.

Nice to have

• Experience within the restaurant industry.

Practical notes

• This is a fully remote position within the United States or Canada.
• Comprehensive health coverage and unlimited Paid Time Off are provided.
• All official communication will come from an @owner.com email address.
• Owner does not conduct interviews via email or chat platforms and will not request personal or financial information.

This position requires a high degree of self-direction and the ability to operate effectively with minimal supervision. You will be expected to manage your own schedule and deliver consistent output against the goals outlined for the Applied AI team. The successful candidate will thrive in an environment where process is built as you scale, rather than relying on established corporate procedures. Because the role is remote, you must be disciplined in your communication habits and proactive in updating stakeholders on progress and blockers. The nature of the work demands that you are comfortable with asynchronous collaboration and documentation-driven workflows. You will frequently be the person responsible for bridging the gap between technical execution and business strategy. This involves not only writing code but also articulating the rationale behind technical choices to non-technical stakeholders. You will need to synthesize feedback from sales, operations, and executive teams to ensure that technical projects remain aligned with real-world business needs. The ability to distill complex technical concepts into clear narratives is therefore as important as the coding itself.

In this role, you will have the freedom to select the tools and methodologies that best solve the problem at hand. There is no one prescribed stack, but you must demonstrate proficiency with the core technologies required to integrate LLMs into production products. This includes understanding how to structure prompts for reliability, how to implement guardrails for safety, and how to measure the quality of model outputs. You will be responsible for designing interfaces between AI components and existing software systems. This often requires creative engineering to ensure that new capabilities enhance rather than disrupt current workflows. You will evaluate whether a custom solution is necessary or whether an existing API can be leveraged effectively. Decision-making in this role is based on a combination of empirical data, technical constraints, and business priorities. You will be expected to justify the resources allocated to each initiative with clear evidence of projected impact. The ability to quantify opportunity size is therefore a critical skill.

The day-to-day work involves a significant amount of exploration and experimentation. You will spend time researching new papers, testing novel architectures, and benchmarking current model performance. However, the ultimate measure of success is not technical novelty but business value. You must be able to balance cutting-edge techniques with pragmatic delivery. This means knowing when to build a sophisticated solution and when a simpler heuristic will suffice. You will work closely with stakeholders to define the metrics that indicate success for an AI project. These metrics might include conversion rates, customer satisfaction, or operational efficiency gains. You will then analyze the results of your interventions to determine whether the AI component is moving those metrics in the desired direction. Based on these findings, you will iterate on the solution or pivot to a different approach. This cycle of measurement and adaptation is central to the responsibilities of this role.

Because the company is early in its AI journey, the Applied AI Lead will have significant influence on the overall direction of the product. The decisions made in this role will shape the company's capabilities for years to come. You will be working on problems that are still evolving, which requires a high tolerance for ambiguity. The ideal candidate is motivated by the challenge of building something from scratch rather than optimizing an established system. You should be excited about the opportunity to leave a lasting mark on the technical foundation of the organization. This is a leadership position that requires both deep technical expertise and strong judgment. You will be expected to communicate a compelling vision for how AI can transform the business. If you are looking for a role where you can own the entire process from idea to impact, this position is a perfect fit.