AI Innovation Engineer

Overview

As AI Innovation Engineer at 829, you'll work across the organization — partnering with VPs, directors, sales leadership, and subject matter experts — to drive operational excellence through AI-native tools and workflows. Your work directly impacts the team's ability to deliver cutting-edge services to clients, building technology with real impact internally and externally.

This is not a traditional AI strategy role. You'll write Python, build agentic workflows, ship MCP integrations, and use coding assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) as daily workflow. We're hiring a builder/coach who ships production AI work and earns adoption from subject matter experts. We are not hiring a strategist who delegates implementation, an AI evangelist without an operating record, or a researcher whose work doesn t practically reach the operating teams that need it.

This is a foundational role reporting directly to the President/COO. You ll have autonomy on execution, ownership of 829 s AI stack and skill library, and workflow architecture. You must be comfortable being scrappy, resourceful, and hands-on, while also operating cross-functionally to influence the broader organization.

6 Months:

• You’ve established a draft playbook around agentic workflow development inclusive of testing, implementation and adoption.

• You’ve successfully crafted 3 - 5 workflows that have met adoption criteria.

• You are able to quantify the success of 1 - 2 workflows through quantitative and qualitative data.

• You have crafted a system to catalogue workflows, skills, and AI tools that enables shorter time-to-value and reduces sprawl.

• Your peers, colleagues and 829’s Leadership Team regularly seek your counsel in relation to AI Service Enablement.

12 Months:

• You have a pressure-tested playbook that details the agentic workflow implementation process and ongoing management.

• You have established a framework for evaluating the performance of workflows.

• You have integrated multiple workflows into a custom frontend in coordination with 829’s Head of Apollo and Engineering Resources.

• You have supported the growth of the innovation function as a center of excellence and / or an extension of 829’s Data Platform, Apollo.

Architect and build proprietary AI agents and automation workflows. Using company-specific data to drive defensible competitive advantage.

• Playbook: Develop and manage a playbook that includes discovery, pilot, improvement, implementation, adoption and measurement phases to execute work.

• Pilots & Proof of Concept: Lead pilots across multiple disciplines to test approaches and technology, using results to inform production workflows and gain buy-in.

• Integrations & Data Pipelines: Develop and maintain integrations between AI tools and core business systems and advertising platforms, including API builds, validation frameworks, and data pipelines.

• SME
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Collaborate closely with subject matter experts to ensure solutions and workflows deliver value, enable team members to produce their best work, are usable, and access that appropriate data.

• Leadership
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Collaborate with senior leaders to ensure that workflows accomplish desired strategic and quality objectives.

• Adoption & Enablement: Ensure that workflows and systems are consistently improved and adopted through systems and cadences that check outputs, measure progress towards goals, and revisit training and adoption mechanisms.

Own the substrate of 829’s AI Innovation Initiatives.

• AI Stack Documentation: Build and maintain 829 s AI stack — tool inventory, vendor strategy, build-vs-buy posture, integration map, and shared-context architecture.

• Skill Library: Develop reusable patterns, agentic workflows, and MCP integrations that provide strategic value and compound across workflows.

• Build vs. Buy: Consult on agency decisions to build workflows and tools vs. buy point solutions to achieve objectives.

Guide and advise a technically competent team of marketing professionals to…