AI Solutions Lead

About the Role

As AI Solutions Lead, you run applied AI strategy on client engagements: assessing AI readiness, running discovery, defining solutions, and building the phased roadmaps and measurement plans that turn a client's ambition into work our designers, AI Engineers, and producers can ship. You work day-to-day with our AI Solutions Director and management team, at the intersection of business problems, customer needs, and technical problem solving.

This is a hands-on role. Our AI Solutions Director sets direction and vets what we take on; you make it real inside the engagement. You run the stakeholder interviews, distill the findings into an executive readout, and draft the roadmap and measurement plan that hold up under technical scrutiny. You're not selling; you make the work credible and comprehensible, and you are the day-to-day strategic voice the client team and our project team rely on.

We need someone who can own an engagement end to end: run the discovery, define the solution, build the plan, and make the recommendation hold up in the room. Someone who raises the bar for how we scope, measure, and deliver applied AI work, and brings the rigor to turn a client's ambition into something real.

This role sits within our Strategy team, reporting into our AI Solutions Director, and working closely with our designers, AI engineers, and producers.

Primary Responsibilities

• Discovery + Stakeholder Interviews: During project planning phases, run structured interviews across client organizations, from product and engineering to executive leadership, to surface needs, constraints, and opportunities. Design and lead the user research (usability testing, journey mapping, interviews) that grounds solutions in real behavior rather than assumptions.
• AI Readiness + Solution Definition: Lead readiness assessments and define solutions that connect business objectives and user needs to technical execution. Define what's feasible, what's valuable, and what to build first, and write it up as a phased plan the engineering team can scope against.
• Measurement in Practice: Define success metrics, KPIs, and measurement frameworks for AI initiatives, then stand them up with engineering: instrument the evaluation, report against it, and share back what we're learning with the client.
• Readouts + Strategic Deliverables: Synthesize research and discovery into clear, actionable readouts. Translate technical complexity into language that moves decisions forward, for C-suite and senior technical audiences alike.
• Cross-functional Collaboration: Work with engineering, design, and production to shape scopes, validate approaches, and make sure roadmaps translate into deliverable work. You are the connective layer between "what the client needs" and "what we're building."
• Operating the Playbook: Apply Addition's discovery, roadmapping, and measurement frameworks on every engagement and feed back what worked and what didn't, so the playbook improves with each client.

The Ideal Person

• Has led discovery engagements end to end: stakeholder interviews, landscape assessments, and strategic readouts, not just contributed to them.
• Has a background working in an agency, studio, or consultancy where projects run fast and strategy has to travel across diverse client work.
• Has hands-on experience with AI implementation (not just strategy): has scoped, prototyped, or shipped something with LLMs, agents, or generative tools and knows what it takes to get it live.
• Sits at the intersection of technology and applied creative, and can speak credibly to both marketing leadership and engineering.
• Has built or contributed to repeatable frameworks for opportunity assessment, roadmapping, or measurement.

Requirements

• 7+ years in strategy, solutions, or technical consulting roles at agencies, consultancies, or technology companies.
• Proven experience leading discovery engagements: stakeholder interviews, landscape assessments, and strategic readouts.
• Working technical fluency in Generative AI and AI systems.
• Comfort presenting to senior client stakeholders and defending a recommendation under questioning.
• Experience scoping and structuring AI or digital transformation workstreams.
• Collaborative by default: you work across engineering, design, and production without friction.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and fast-paced environments.

Why Join Addition?

• Shape the Future: Lead and innovate at an AI-powered studio at the forefront of applied AI innovation.
• High-Impact Work: Build and drive technological and creative solutions that redefine how global brands operate.
• Direct Leadership Access: Collaborate closely with our CEO, leadership team, and R/GA network to help define how we scale.

This role is based in the NYC / Tri-State area, Greater Los Angeles area, or San Francisco Bay Area. Candidates must be located within commuting distance in the NYC area (NY, NJ, CT), Greater LA area (Southern California), San Francisco Bay Area, or be willing to relocate. This position offers a hybrid work model, with regular in-person collaboration and team / client workshops.

The hiring range for this position is $150,000 to $170,000. Where an employee or prospective employee is paid within this range will depend on, among other factors, actual ranges for current/former employees in the subject position; budgetary considerations; tenure and standing with the company (applicable to current employees); as well as the employee's/applicant's applicable skills, pertinent experience, and qualifications.

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