Headspace

Headspace

Director, AI Architect

San Francisco - Hybrid · Director · Full-time

Sponsorship not specified$230k-$288kDetected 33 days ago
Vector DatabasesAWSGCPAzureKubernetesMachine LearningData EngineeringData ScienceLLMsRAGMLOpsAI OrchestrationComplianceHIPAAPatient CareResearchLeadershipCommunicationMentoring

About the role

  • Your recruiter will provide more details on the specific salary range during the hiring process.
  • At Headspace, base salary is but one component of our Total Rewards package.

Responsibilities

  • Define and lead Headspace's overarching AI architecture strategy, establishing the foundational patterns, platforms, and principles for an AI-first service transformation across our portfolio of streaming content, conversational AI, coaching, therapy and psychiatry services.
  • Partner directly with the executive team, product leadership, and senior engineering stakeholders to align AI strategy with company goals, translating business opportunities into concrete technical roadmaps.
  • Author company-wide technical specs that establish AI design principles, evaluation frameworks, guardrails, and reusable platform components.
  • Lead the selection, evaluation, and integration of AI/ML infrastructure, including model providers, vector databases, orchestration frameworks, and MLOps tooling, balancing build vs. buy decisions with long-term strategic implications.
  • Collaborate with Data Science, ML Engineering, and Product teams to ensure AI systems are grounded in high-quality, privacy-preserving data pipelines and continuously improve through rigorous feedback loops.
  • Mentor and elevate engineers, ML practitioners, and technical leads across the organization, helping teams build confidence and competency in applied AI development.
  • 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4 years focused on the design and delivery of production AI/ML systems at scale.
  • We live them daily: Make the Mission Matter, Iterate to Great, Own the Outcome, and Connect with Courage.

Requirements

  • Deep expertise in modern AI architectures, including LLMs, RAG systems, embedding pipelines, agentic frameworks, and real-time inference, with hands-on experience moving these from prototype to production.
  • Proven ability to define AI strategy at an organizational level: translating ambiguous business challenges into technical roadmaps, influencing executive stakeholders, and driving alignment across cross-functional teams.
  • Extensive experience with cloud-native AI infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure), containerized deployment (Kubernetes), and MLOps practices including model serving, monitoring, and evaluation pipelines.
  • Demonstrated ability to evaluate and integrate third-party AI providers, orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar), and vector/embedding database systems.
  • Exceptional communication skills: you can articulate complex AI trade-offs clearly to both technical engineers and non-technical executives, and write specs that bring entire organizations along with you.
  • Ownership mindset: you are comfortable navigating ambiguity, making consequential architectural decisions with incomplete information, and taking accountability for outcomes across teams.
  • Familiarity with Server-Driven UI (SDUI) and how AI-driven personalization integrates with dynamic, schema-based rendering across web and mobile clients.

Nice to have

  • Preferred Skills:

Skills

  • BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • Background in fine-tuning, RLHF, or domain-adapted model training for specialized consumer applications.
  • Experience with conversational AI, dialogue systems, or AI-powered coaching/companionship products.
  • Experience driving AI governance initiatives, including model cards, audit trails, and cross-functional risk review processes.
  • Exceptional communication

Compensation

  • At Headspace, base salary is but one component of our Total Rewards package.
  • Your recruiter will provide more details on the specific salary range during the hiring process.

Benefits

  • The anticipated new hire base salary range for this full-time position is $230,000-$287,500 + equity + benefits.
  • Additional details about our Total Rewards package will be provided during the recruitment process.
  • Headspace exists to provide every person access to lifelong mental health support.
  • They're our shared commitment to building a more connected, human-centered team-one that's redefining how mental health care supports people today and for generations to come.
  • The chance to shape what mental health care looks like next
  • Competitive pay and benefits that support your whole self
  • How we feel about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging:
  • Within this range, individual compensation is determined by a candidate's location as well as a range of factors including but not limited to: unique relevant experience, job-related skills, and education or training.

Company info

  • At Headspace, our values aren't just what we believe, they're how we work, grow, and make an impact together.
  • These values shape our decisions, guide our collaborations, and define our culture.
  • A culture that's collaborative, inclusive, and grounded in our values
  • Our salary ranges are based on the job, level, and location, and reflect the lowest to highest geographic markets where we are hiring for this role within the United States.
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This listing is sourced directly from Headspace's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.