Executive Director, Agentic Lab and Architecture Lead

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for an Executive Director, Agentic Lab and Architecture Lead based in United States. The Executive Director, Agentic Lab and Architecture Lead will shape the technical direction for enterprise agentic AI capabilities, defining the architecture, standards, and innovation roadmap that enable responsible adoption at scale. You will lead an innovation-focused lab dedicated to rapidly prototyping, evaluating, and validating emerging AI agent technologies and approaches. The role combines strategic architecture leadership with hands-on technical credibility, translating promising concepts into reusable enterprise patterns and production-ready capabilities. You will establish frameworks for agent orchestration, memory, RAG, evaluation, observability, APIs, and integration with enterprise platforms. Working across engineering, product, security, architecture, data, and business teams, you will ensure successful transitions from experimentation to scalable deployment. A strong focus on Responsible AI, privacy, security, governance, compliance, and human oversight will be embedded throughout the technology lifecycle. This is a high-impact executive role for an innovative technical leader who can influence senior stakeholders while developing talent and building the foundations for enterprise AI transformation. Define enterprise architecture, reference patterns, technical standards, and engineering guardrails for secure, scalable, and governed agentic AI capabilities. Establish reusable architectural approaches covering agent orchestration, multi-agent systems, memory, RAG, tool and function calling, APIs, evaluation, observability, and enterprise integration. Lead the Agentic Lab innovation roadmap, creating an environment for rapid experimentation, technical validation, and disciplined incubation of high-potential AI technologies. Evaluate foundation models, agent frameworks, orchestration technologies, developer tools, and emerging approaches to determine their suitability for enterprise adoption. Develop reusable proof-of-concepts, accelerators, architectural blueprints, and reference implementations that accelerate delivery and reduce duplicated effort across AI initiatives. Drive adoption of shared technical assets and standards while establishing scalable patterns that support consistent implementation across enterprise AI solutions. Partner with AI engineering, platform engineering, product, architecture, security, data, technology, and business teams to transition validated prototypes into production-ready capabilities. Oversee the technical readiness and handoff of lab concepts into scaled implementations, including architecture reviews, documentation, risk assessments, and operating model transitions. Embed Responsible AI, security, privacy, accessibility, data governance, regulatory, and quality requirements into architectures and experimentation practices from the outset. Establish evaluation and monitoring standards covering agent reliability, explainability, performance, safety, human oversight, and measurable business value. Lead, coach, and develop architects, engineers, and other technical talent, promoting disciplined experimentation, engineering excellence, reuse, and continuous learning. Communicate architecture decisions, technical trade-offs, risks, investment requirements, progress, and strategic recommendations clearly to senior executives and cross-functional stakeholders. Requirements Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, or another relevant technical discipline. 12+ years of experience designing enterprise software platforms, AI architectures, data and AI products, or cloud-native engineering capabilities, including significant technical leadership experience. Deep expertise in LLMs, agent frameworks, multi-agent orchestration, RAG, vecto