Director of AI Engineering

About
Scorebuddy is a leading Quality Management SaaS platform for Contact Centres. By combining quality management, coaching and learning with advanced AI Analytics, we help hundreds of customers worldwide to be operationally efficient, scale their contact centres, improve agent performance and enhance overall customer experience. We are a globally successful SaaS company, serving a diverse international customer base with teams ranging in size from 20 to 20,000 end users. 
 
We are looking for a seasoned, visionary leader in AI and engineering to join our senior team and shape the next phase of innovation at Scorebuddy. In this pivotal role, you'll champion technological innovations that are already transforming the Quality Assurance and Customer Service landscapes. You'll have the opportunity to assemble an exceptional team of AI specialists while developing solutions that deliver measurable efficiency gains and performance improvements for contact centres globally. 
 
Join us in shaping the future of quality management technology, directly impacting how businesses evaluate, coach and elevate customer experiences. This role will report directly to the executive team and plays a critical role in shaping Scorebuddy’s AI product vision, engineering culture and long-term technology strategy. 
 
What you'll do

• Leadership - Direct and manage a team of AI specialists and engineers focused on AI innovation, research and development. Duties include recruitment, training, performance management and professional development of team members with a focus on fostering excellence and innovation. 
• Team Development - Build and mentor a team of AI specialists and machine 
  learning engineers, cultivate an environment that attracts top AI talent and develop career progression paths for specialised technical roles. 
• AI Strategy - Develop and execute a comprehensive AI strategy that aligns with our product roadmap, identify emerging technologies and research areas that could benefit our platform and guide the implementation of AI solutions that enhance customer value. 
• Research & Development - Establish and lead R&D initiatives, balance exploratory research with practical applications and oversee the transition of successful experiments into production-ready features. 
• Technical Vision - Guide architectural decisions for AI systems, establish 
  engineering standards for AI development and work closely with the CTO to integrate AI capabilities into the overall technical vision. 
• Product Alignment - Partner with Product Management to identify opportunities for AI-driven features, collaborate on rapid prototyping and PoCs to validate AI 
  applications, participate in product strategy development and ensure AI initiatives deliver tangible business value.
• Innovation Leadership - Foster a culture of innovation, establish frameworks for 
  evaluating new technologies, develop rigorous testing and validation processes for experimental AI solutions and balance technological ambition with practical 
  implementation. 
  
• Operational Excellence - Oversee resource allocation for AI initiatives, develop 
  metrics to evaluate R&D effectiveness and manage budgets for research activities. 
• Stakeholder Management - Communicate complex AI concepts to business 
  stakeholders, collaborate with cross-functional teams and ensure alignment between technical capabilities and business objectives.
• Quality & Security - Establish robust practices for AI ethics, data privacy and model governance, maintain high quality standards for AI systems and ensure security-by-design in all AI implementations.

What are we looking for

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years in leadership roles focused on AI, machine learning or innovation
• Proven track record of leading technical teams and delivering AI-powered solutions in production environments 
• Deep understanding of both classical and modern ML techniques, including 
  transformer-based architectures (e.g., BERT), vector embeddings (e.g., Word2Vec), and NLP fundamentals 
• Hands-on experience with Generative AI, including foundation models, retrieval-
  augmented generation (RAG) and vector databases 
• Experience with distributed computing and orchestration tools, including Ray for scalable ML workloads and Kubernetes for containerised deployment and 
  infrastructure management 
• Experience with AI/ML tools such as Hugging Face Transformers (for model 
  deployment and fine-tuning), and orchestration frameworks like LangChain and 
  LangGraph for building LLM-based applications
• Solid experience with cloud platforms, especially AWS and Azure AI/ML services (e.g., Bedrock, SageMaker)
• Familiarity with MLOps platforms (e.g., MLflow, Kubeflow) and model monitoring
• Understanding of AI safety, bias mitigation, and ethical considerations
• Strong programming skills in Python; exposure to Golang is a plus
• Experience with microservices architectures
• Demonstrated success in strategic planning and execution of AI roadmaps
• Ability to establish metrics for evaluating R&D effectiveness
• Experience deploying LLMs and integrating AI features into SaaS products
• Excellence in stakeholder management and technical communication
• Experience managing AI/ML research budgets, vendor relationships and resource planning  

Education & Qualifications 

• MSc in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or related technical discipline or equivalent proven commercial experience
   

What we offer

• Competitive salary & bonus based on experience
• Hybrid working with modern offices located in Dublin city
• 25 paid holidays annually
• Subsidised gym membership
• Webdoctor online GP service access
• Taxsaver tickets & Cycle to Work schemes
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and sick leave pay
• Access to Irish Life PRSA, salary sacrifice 

 ***** NO AGENCY ASSISTANCE REQUIRED *****