Director of AI and Automation

Director of AI & Automation

By the Sea Resorts
Panama City Beach, FL
Full-Time
Position Overview

By the Sea Resorts is seeking a highly capable, hands-on Director of AI & Automation to lead the practical adoption of artificial intelligence, automation, and emerging technologies across our growing organization.

This position combines AI strategy with hands-on technical execution. We are looking for someone who can determine where AI can create meaningful business value and then personally design, develop, integrate, test, and deploy the solutions needed to make it happen.

This is not a purely advisory, consulting, or AI architecture role. The successful candidate will be expected to write code, build integrations, work with APIs and databases, develop AI applications and automated workflows, troubleshoot technical problems, and take solutions from concept through production deployment.

By the Sea Resorts operates a diverse portfolio of hotels, restaurants, employee housing, and commercial laundry facilities. The Director of AI & Automation will work directly with company leadership and operational teams across Operations, Human Resources, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Revenue Management, IT, and Commercial Laundry.

The ideal candidate combines the vision to identify how AI can transform a business with the technical ability to personally build the systems that make that transformation possible.
Key Responsibilities

• Develop and lead the company's long-term AI, automation, and digital transformation strategy.
• Identify high-value opportunities for AI, workflow automation, system integration, and process improvement throughout the organization.
• Personally design, code, build, test, deploy, and maintain AI-powered applications, internal tools, assistants, agents, and automated workflows.
• Build production-ready solutions using large language models and AI platforms such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, or similar technologies.
• Develop AI agents, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, internal knowledge assistants, enterprise search tools, and decision-support applications.
• Integrate AI and automation solutions with existing company systems using APIs, databases, webhooks, middleware, and integration platforms.
• Work with property management systems, reservation systems, point-of-sale systems, accounting platforms, HR systems, operational systems, and other enterprise technology.
• Build and maintain data pipelines and integrations necessary to support AI applications and automated business processes.
• Develop internal applications and tools using Python, SQL, APIs, and other appropriate technologies.
• Partner directly with executives, department leaders, hotel teams, front-line employees, call centers, plant managers, and other operators to understand business challenges.
• Translate operational problems into practical technical solutions.
• Create prototypes when appropriate, but take successful solutions beyond experimentation into reliable production systems employees actually use.
• Evaluate third-party AI and automation products and determine when the organization should build internally versus purchase or integrate an outside platform.
• Create AI-powered reporting, analytics, forecasting, dashboards, and decision-support tools.
• Automate repetitive administrative and operational processes while maintaining appropriate controls and human oversight.
• Establish standards for AI security, data privacy, access control, responsible AI use, and governance in partnership with IT and executive leadership.
• Test AI systems for accuracy, security, reliability, scalability, and usability before deployment.
• Monitor deployed solutions and continuously improve performance based on user feedback, system performance, and measurable business results.
• Document applications, integrations, workflows, architecture, APIs, data flows, and technical processes.
• Train employees and leaders on newly implemented AI tools and systems.
• Manage relationships with outside AI, software, and technology vendors when external expertise is needed.
• Stay current on emerging AI technologies and recommend technologies that can create measurable operational or financial value.
• Establish priorities and maintain an AI and automation roadmap based on business impact, complexity, cost, and expected return on investment.

Potential Areas of Focus
Hotel Operations

Guest communications, review analysis, service recovery, operational reporting, housekeeping productivity, maintenance tracking, labor forecasting, property-level reporting, and workflow automation.
Human Resources

Recruiting automation, applicant screening support, onboarding, employee communications, policy knowledge tools, workforce analytics, HR reporting, document automation, and employee self-service tools.
Finance

Reporting automation, invoice processing, financial analysis, variance identification, data consolidation, forecasting, anomaly detection, and management reporting.
Sales & Marketing

Lead management, customer segmentation, content development, campaign analysis, sales reporting, automated follow-up, and customer insights.
Revenue Management

Reporting automation, competitive analysis, forecasting support, pricing insights, trend identification, and data consolidation.
Commercial Laundry

Production analytics, labor forecasting, logistics and route optimization, equipment and maintenance analytics, operational dashboards, production scheduling, and plant performance reporting.
Executive Leadership

Automated KPI reporting, business intelligence, executive dashboards, trend identification, forecasting, operational alerts, and decision-support tools.
Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Data Science, Engineering, Business Technology, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 4+ years of experience in software development, AI engineering, automation engineering, systems integration, data engineering, or a closely related technical field.
• Demonstrated experience personally building and deploying production software or AI solutions.
• Hands-on experience developing applications using generative AI and large language model APIs.
• Experience deploying production integrations involving LLM APIs, AI agents, or RAG systems, rather than only proofs of concept or demonstrations.
• Strong proficiency with Python.
• Strong working knowledge of SQL and relational databases.
• Experience designing, consuming, and integrating REST APIs, webhooks, databases, and enterprise systems.
• Experience integrating multiple business applications and data sources.
• Experience building automated workflows and backend services.
• Understanding of software development practices including version control, testing, debugging, deployment, documentation, and ongoing maintenance.
• Strong understanding of AI capabilities, limitations, hallucination risks, data privacy, security, and responsible AI practices.
• Ability to understand complex business processes and translate them into practical technical solutions.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to independently manage projects from initial business problem through development and production deployment.
• Ability to work directly with non-technical operators and department leaders to understand how work actually gets done.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with OpenAI APIs, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, or similar AI platforms.
• Experience building AI agents, RAG systems, internal knowledge assistants, enterprise search tools, or AI-enabled business applications.
• Experience with automation platforms such as Microsoft Power Automate, Zapier, Make, n8n, or similar technologies.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.
• Experience with data visualization, business intelligence platforms, dashboards, and reporting tools.
• Experience with Microsoft 365 environments and enterprise system integrations.
• Experience integrating systems such as property management systems (PMS), central reservation systems (CRS), point-of-sale systems (POS), ERP/accounting platforms, CRM systems, HRIS platforms, or operational management systems.
• Experience implementing technology in hospitality, restaurants, logistics, manufacturing, commercial laundry, multi-location operations, or another operationally complex environment.
• Experience building applications used by front-line employees rather than only technical users.
• Experience managing outside technology vendors, development partners, or implementation consultants.
• Knowledge of cybersecurity, identity management, data governance, and AI governance principles.

What We Will Ask Candidates to Demonstrate

Candidates should be prepared to discuss specific AI, automation, software, or integration projects they personally built.

Strong candidates will be able to explain:

• What business problem they were solving.
• What they personally designed and developed.
• What programming languages, APIs, databases, AI models, and platforms they used.
• How the solution was integrated with existing business systems.
• How the solution moved from prototype into production.
• How many employees or customers actually used the solution.
• What technical challenges they encountered and how they solved them
• What measurable business results the project produced.

A portfolio, GitHub repository, technical project examples, or other demonstrations of previously developed solutions are strongly preferred.
What Success Looks Like

The successful candidate will move the company beyond AI experimentation and into practical, production-level implementation.

Success in this position will include:

• Creating a clear and actionable AI and automation roadmap for the organization.
• Personally building and deploying AI applications and automated workflows.
• Implementing solutions employees actually adopt and use.
• Reducing repetitive administrative and operational work.
• Improving access to company information and operational data.
• Connecting previously disconnected systems and data sources.
• Improving employee productivity and decision-making.
• Delivering measurable financial or operational return on AI and technology investments.
• Creating a scalable technology foundation that allows the company's use of AI and automation to grow over time.

This individual should be equally comfortable discussing AI strategy with executive leadership and opening a development environment to build the solution themselves.