Head of GenAI Platform

Job description

ABOUT US Founded in 2019 and part of Y Combinator's 2020 cohort, Photoroom https://www.photoroom.com is the leading visual solution for e-commerce. We've raised Series B funding and reached 300+ million users worldwide, processing over 5 billion images annually and serving both small businesses and major enterprises like Amazon, DoorDash, and Decathlon through our mobile app, web platform, and API. We're a remote-friendly team of 100+ passionate builders giving e-commerce businesses superpowers to create visuals that help them grow, making the hardest parts of selling online disappear. We focus on craft, innovation, and collaboration, creating exceptional impact for e-commerce businesses worldwide. HEAD OF GENAI PLATFORM ROLE SUMMARY We're looking for a Head of GenAI Platform to lead the strategy and technical direction behind Photoroom's generative AI platform, spanning model orchestration, evaluation, agentic workflows, and foundation model training, enabling our teams to ship breakthrough AI products faster than anyone else. You'll partner closely with our Infrastructure team on inference infrastructure and model serving, rather than owning that layer outright. This is a highly strategic leadership role combining strong technical grounding, organisational leadership, and product thinking. Deep technical expertise already exists across our ML and Research teams, so we're not looking for the single deepest expert in the room, we're looking for someone who has been hands-on in ML or research themselves, understands the space well enough to lead a credible technical conversation and make sound calls, and can create the conditions for that expertise to thrive. You'll work closely with our CTO and senior leaders across Product and Engineering to shape how AI is built, deployed, and scaled across the company. Compensation: Competitive salary + meaningful equity Location: Paris, France (Hybrid) Relocation: Visa sponsorship and relocation support up to €10,000 available ABOUT THE ROLE You'll be responsible for building both the technical foundations and the organisation that enable Photoroom's next generation of AI products. Your responsibilities will include: - Defining the long-term vision and technical strategy for our GenAI Platform around model orchestration, evaluation, agentic workflows and foundation model training - Partnering with our Infrastructure team on inference infrastructure, model serving and reliability, so the platform stays scalable and cost-efficient across billions of inference requests - Partnering with Research to rapidly bring new models into production - Leading and growing a multidisciplinary team of ML Engineers, Software Engineers and Researchers, setting direction for the team as a whole, while day-to-day management of individual contributors continues through the team's existing engineering leads - Creating an environment where ambitious technical ideas can move from research to production in days rather than months - Building evaluation frameworks that measure model quality, cost and latency consistently across the platform - Working closely with Product, Engineering and Executive leadership to ensure platform investments directly accelerate product innovation WHAT YOU'LL BRING We're looking for someone with strong technical grounding and proven leadership experience. You don't need to be the foremost technical authority in every area, as that depth already exists in the team, but you should have been a hands-on ML/research practitioner at some point in your career, ideally with some research experience, so you can lead the function credibly. You'll likely have: - Significant experience leading Machine Learning or AI organisations within product-focused companies, having started your career as a hands-on ML engineer or researcher before moving into leadership - Experience building and operating AI platforms: model orchestration, evaluation pipelines or agent frameworks, with enough grounding in inference infrastructure and model serving to partner effectively with an Infrastructure team, without needing to own that layer directly - Strong technical expertise across Generative AI, Computer Vision or Foundation Models - A track record of taking emerging technologies from research into production systems used by millions of users. We don't expect deep, specific agentic-workflow experience, the field is relatively new and nobody has a long track record there, but we do want evidence you can effectively leverage new technologies to productise what's next - Experience growing high-performing engineering and research teams through hiring, coaching and organisational design - Enough technical depth to follow and meaningfully contribute to an architecture conversation outside your core area, you don't need all the answers, but you must understand the building blocks well enough to ask the right questions and make a call when needed - Strong product instincts and the ability to balance long-term technical investments against immediate customer impact - Excellent communication skills and experience partnering with Product, Engineering, Marketing and Executive stakeholders WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE Within your first 12-18 months, you'll have: - Established a clear long-term strategy for Photoroom's AI platform - Built infrastructure that significantly reduces the time required to ship new AI capabilities - Enabled research teams to move new models into production rapidly and reliably - Improved platform performance, reliability and infrastructure efficiency at scale, in close partnership with the Infrastructure team - Built and retained a world-class team of ML Engineers, Researchers and Platform Engineers - Created evaluation frameworks that allow model quality, cost and latency to be measured consistently across the platform - Helped define the technical direction that underpins the next generation of AI-powered products at Photoroom WHY THIS ROLE MATTERS Every AI capability at Photoroom depends on the platform your team builds. From foundation model training to model orchestration, evaluation pipelines and production inference, you'll shape the technical backbone that enables our teams to innovate quickly while operating at massive scale. This is an opportunity to influence both the long-term direction of our AI strategy and the systems that process billions of images every year. ABOUT PHOTOROOM Photoroom was launched in 2020 after being accepted into Y Combinator and has grown into one of the world's leading AI photo editing platforms. Today we have: - Over 300 million downloads - More than 5 billion images processed annually - Millions of active users across mobile, web and API - Customers ranging from individual creators to global brands including Amazon, Shopify, eBay, DoorDash, Decathlon and Depop We're profitable, growing rapidly and continuing to invest heavily in AI research and product innovation. Our teams train our own foundation models, operate large-scale GPU infrastructure, and build AI products used every day by millions of people worldwide. WORKING AT PHOTOROOM We believe great people do their best work when given ownership, autonomy and ambitious problems to solve. We offer: - Competitive salary and meaningful equity - Hybrid working from our Paris headquarters - Visa sponsorship and relocation support - MacBook Pro and full home office setup - 30 days annual leave - Private healthcare - Regular company off-sites and team retreats - A collaborative, high-performance engineering culture focused on shipping impactful AI products HIRING PROCESS - Recruiter conversation - Leadership & values conversation with our CTO - Technical screening - Technical case study (working session) - Leadership and cross-functional interviews - References - Offer DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND BELONGING We're committed to enabling everyone to feel included and valued at work. We believe our company and culture are strongest when composed of diverse experiences and backgrounds. That's also why we have flexible working hours, trust people to work remotely, and extended parental leave. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, family, gender identity, marital status, national origin, physical or mental disability, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws.