VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass.

Versant is seeking a Director, AI Solutions Architecture to accelerate the adoption of AI across the enterprise. This role serves as a strategic technical leader, helping teams translate emerging AI capabilities into scalable business solutions that drive measurable impact. 

Reporting to the VP of Innovation and Emerging Tech, this role will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Cybersecurity, Resilience, Data, and business stakeholders to establish architectural standards, shared platform capabilities, and reusable services that enable teams to safely and effectively build AI-powered applications and intelligent agents. 

This position combines elements of enterprise architecture, platform engineering, applied AI, and technical strategy. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable engaging with senior leaders on enterprise technology strategy, partnering with engineers on implementation details, and rapidly evaluating new AI technologies and capabilities. 

Why This Role Matters 

AI is becoming a foundational capability across Versant’s business and technology ecosystem. This role will help define how AI solutions are designed, governed, and scaled across the enterprise while accelerating innovation, improving delivery efficiency, and ensuring AI investments deliver meaningful business value. 

This is a hybrid position based in New Jersey and requires regular in-office collaboration with colleagues and stakeholders. 

What You’ll Do 

Enterprise AI Architecture 

• Define and evolve enterprise architecture standards, reference patterns, and best practices for AI-powered applications and intelligent agent systems. 

• Establish scalable approaches for orchestration, retrieval, workflow automation, tool integration, memory management, planning, and human oversight. 

• Partner with Engineering, Cybersecurity, and Resilience teams to establish secure development and deployment standards for AI solutions. 

• Ensure architectural decisions balance innovation, scalability, security, governance, and operational excellence. 

Shared AI Platform Enablement 

• Lead the development and adoption of reusable AI platform capabilities, frameworks, templates, and developer tooling. 

• Partner with Cloud Operations and Engineering teams to establish deployment, monitoring, evaluation, governance, and operational support patterns. 

• Define common services for model access, prompt management, retrieval, observability, policy enforcement, and cost management. 

• Drive adoption of shared AI capabilities across business, technology, and operational teams. 

Strategic Solution Leadership 

• Partner directly with stakeholders across Versant to identify opportunities where AI can create business value. 

• Guide teams through technical discovery, architecture reviews, solution design, and implementation planning. 

• Help translate complex or ambiguous business challenges into scalable and sustainable technology solutions. 

• Provide hands-on leadership for strategic enterprise initiatives and high-impact use cases. 

AI Innovation & Technology Strategy 

• Evaluate emerging AI platforms, models, frameworks, and technologies. 

• Build strong relationships with strategic technology partners and industry leaders. 

• Recommend platform investments, architectural improvements, and new capabilities that support enterprise objectives. 

• Help ensure Versant’s AI strategy remains aligned with industry advancements and business priorities. 

Platform Roadmap & Adoption 

• Partner with Product and Engineering leaders to shape the roadmap for enterprise AI services. 

• Identify opportunities to create reusable capabilities that improve speed, consistency, and quality across teams. 

• Establish metrics that measure adoption, reliability, developer productivity, and business impact. 

• Drive continuous improvement of enterprise AI capabilities and operating models. 

What You Bring 

Required Qualifications 

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, solutions architecture, platform engineering, enterprise architecture, or related technical leadership roles. 

• Experience designing, building, and deploying enterprise-scale cloud applications and distributed systems. 

• Experience working with modern AI platforms such as OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Google Gemini, Anthropic, Salesforce Agentforce, or comparable technologies. 

• Strong understanding of APIs, the Model Context Protocol, integration architectures, CI/CD practices, cloud-native development, observability, security principles, and identity management. 

• Experience partnering with technical and business stakeholders to define and deliver complex solutions. 

• Strong communication, presentation, and influencing skills with the ability to engage audiences at all levels of the organization. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience building, deploying, or scaling AI-powered applications or intelligent agent systems in production environments. 

• Experience with agent orchestration frameworks, retrieval systems, evaluation frameworks, MCP implementations, and tool integration patterns. 

• Experience developing engineering standards, platform services, and reusable developer capabilities. 

• Experience in Solutions Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineering, Applied AI, Developer Platforms, or related disciplines. 

• Experience collaborating with leading AI technology providers and emerging AI ecosystems. 

How We Do It 

Success in this role requires a demonstrated commitment to Versant’s core behaviors: 

• Trust – Build secure, reliable, and responsible solutions while operating with integrity and accountability. 

• Teamwork – Foster collaboration across business and technology teams to achieve shared outcomes. 

• Transparency – Communicate openly, provide clarity on risks and opportunities, and promote informed decision-making. 

• Agility – Adapt quickly to changing priorities, evolving technologies, and emerging business needs. 

• Entrepreneurial Spirit – Embrace innovation, challenge assumptions, and proactively pursue new opportunities for growth and impact. 

Why You’ll Love It Here 

At Versant, you’ll help shape the future of media, entertainment, and technology while working alongside talented teams that are passionate about innovation, collaboration, and impact. 

We offer a comprehensive total rewards package designed to support your health, well-being, professional growth, and long-term success. 

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [email protected].

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.