Director of Engineering - Applied AI

3 weeks ago Be among the first 25 applicants

Serko is a cutting-edge tech platform in global business travel & expense technology. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, embracing diversity and creating a positive impact. We bring people together through the world's leading business travel marketplace, driving real, impactful change.

With offices in New Zealand, Australia, North America, and China, we are expanding our global footprint and launching a new hub in Bengaluru, India. We are building a world‑class team and product with individuals from diverse backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives.

We're building a greenfield AI‑native travel booking product designed for the U.S. market—an intent‑driven conversational experience that turns natural language into policy‑compliant, bookable trips.

This rare opportunity lets you define architecture and engineering standards for a new AI product from near‑zero, operating with startup pace and autonomy while being backed by an ASX‑listed company.

We’re building production‑grade agentic AI systems that power real product outcomes. As Director of Engineering, Applied AI you will be a hands‑on technical leader who ships robust, scalable AI features, grows engineering capability, and aligns execution to business goals. This is not a research role—you’ll deliver production systems, remove technical risk, and create repeatable engineering practices.

• Ship production agentic/LLM‑based features with a predictable cadence and measurable outcomes
• Reduce technical debt and operational incidents while improving deployment velocity
• Build and scale multiple high‑performing engineering teams (hiring, mentoring, performance)
• Set engineering standards for inference, evaluation, monitoring, and observability for ML services
• Partner with Product, Research, and GTM to prioritize use cases and turn prototypes into shipped features

• 8+ years leading engineering teams and 5+ years building production ML/LLM systems end‑to‑end
• Hands‑on experience deploying LLMs/agentic systems, model integrations, or AI inference at scale
• Strong track record of delivering platform reliability, operational excellence, and reducing tech debt
• Excellent cross‑functional communication with Product and business leaders
• Based in the Bay Area or willing to work West‑Coast hours

• Experience with RLHF/RLAIF, model serving stacks, or large‑scale data pipelines
• Background in knowledge retrieval, hybrid search, or agent orchestration frameworks

At Serko we aim to create a place where people can do their best work. We provide great tools, support, and an environment that encourages impact.

• A competitive base pay
• Medical benefits
• Discretionary incentive plan based on individual and company performance
• Focus on development:
  Access to a learning & development platform and opportunity to own your career pathways
• Flexible work policy

Hit the "apply" button now, or explore more about what it’s like to work at Serko and all our global opportunities at