Director of AI
VP / Director of AI Engineering
TENEX.AI · Cybersecurity / Managed Detection & Response · 20-100 employees · 📍 Sarasota, FL
Ground-floor AI/ML engineering director at a well-funded, AI-native MDR startup to own the full AI stack — LLMs, RAG pipelines, graph reasoning, and autonomous threat response — at billion-event scale.
AI Maturity
advanced
Reports To
CTO
Why Role Exists
Expansion
Company Stage
startup
Source
linkedin
Key Responsibilities
- Own technical vision and architecture for autonomous detection, RAG investigation, and auto-remediation systems
- Design and productionize large-scale LLMs, graph reasoning engines, and streaming security event pipelines
- Lead, mentor, and grow multiple AI engineering teams; run design reviews and uphold code quality
- Own AI evaluation framework — prompt libraries, fine-tuning, red-team testing, latency budgets, and fallback strategies
- Partner with product and design to shape platform evolution and drive complex software delivery
Requirements
- Proven experience leading AI/ML engineering teams in a production environment
- Hands-on expertise with LLMs, RAG architectures, and large-scale ML systems
- Experience with distributed systems and streaming data pipelines at scale
- Security-first engineering mindset
- Ability to be onsite Mon–Thu in San Jose CA, Sarasota FL, or Kansas City MO
Signals
- ⚠ No salary range disclosed
- ⚠ Job description truncated mid-sentence suggesting incomplete posting
- ⚠ Three office locations listed (San Jose, Sarasota, Kansas City) — geographic fragmentation may complicate team cohesion
- ⚠ Role title is 'Director' but scope reads VP/SVP — possible title compression at startup stage
- ✓ Seed round led by a16z with follow-on from Crosspoint Capital, Shield Capital, DTCP, and Florida Opportunity Fund — serious institutional backing
- ✓ Explicit equity upside framing for early employees
- ✓ AI is the core product, not a side initiative — meaningful technical scope
- ✓ Autonomous, production-grade AI systems already described in detail, suggesting real technical foundation exists
- ✓ Multi-team leadership mandate with clear ownership of AI layer
Company History
This role has appeared at least twice in the company's posting history (previously listed 2026-05-30 with nearly identical description). Reposting within the same period likely reflects difficulty closing a strong candidate at the director level given undisclosed compensation, or rapid team expansion requiring multiple hires into the AI engineering leadership layer.