Head of Applied AI

HEAD OF APPLIED AI Catena Labs is building the first AI-native financial institution to provide the new financial infrastructure and services AI systems need to conduct commerce. We’re giving AI agents the tools to identify themselves and use money safely and efficiently. At the same time, we’re providing businesses with a trusted, licensed financial partner with the capability to manage risk and compliance. By building a financial institution with AI and stablecoin infrastructure, we are breaking down the legacy financial system barriers that prevent an AI-driven economy. Backed by leading venture investors, we’re assembling a team of engineers, designers, data scientists, and finance professionals working together to build a stronger, more resilient global economy that creates broad prosperity. We’re looking for people with the talent, curiosity, and passion to invent an entirely new category of financial services. THE ROLE We're looking for a Head of Applied AI to lead our AI Platform team. This role combines AI engineering and data science. You'll build systems directly while setting technical direction for how AI works across Catena, both in our products and our operations. The AI Platform team sits alongside Product Development and Banking Core, and reports to the CTO. You'll own the tools, models, frameworks, and eval processes we use internally and within our products. Product Development relies on your team's capabilities, and you'll ensure AI integrates reliably with Banking Core via APIs, MCP, and other interfaces. You'll also build AI tools that make the company itself more effective. This spans product AI (agent interactions, identity, risk), operational AI (compliance workflows, automation), and corporate AI (how the team works with AI daily). We care more about good judgment on what to build than rigid adherence to categories. Initially, this is an 80/20 maker/manager role. You'll build on an existing foundation while growing the team. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Own the orchestration layer connecting product experiences to banking infrastructure - Establish eval frameworks that prove our agents are reliable - Stay ahead of emerging agent protocols (A2A, x402, MCP, LangGraph) and integrate where it strengthens our infrastructure - Partner closely with Product Development and Banking Core to ensure AI capabilities are deeply integrated - Hire and develop AI engineers and data scientists as the team grows WHO YOU ARE - Deep experience shipping production AI systems, whether that's a decade in ML or fewer years with intensive focus on the current LLM paradigm - You build things directly. You're not looking for a role where you manage without coding. - Strong intuition for model selection, eval methodology, and build-vs-buy tradeoffs - Security-minded. You understand prompt injection, adversarial inputs, and why these matter more when money is involved. - Comfortable with ambiguity, able to set direction while shipping TECH STACK We work primarily in Python and TypeScript, deploy on AWS and CloudFlare, and use multiple models. You'll have opinions on this stack and the latitude to evolve it. NICE TO HAVE - Experience in fintech, payments, or regulated financial services - Hands-on work with agent orchestration frameworks - Background in compliance or risk systems where auditability matters JOIN US If you're passionate about pushing the boundaries of what AI agents can do in financial services and want to be part of building the trusted financial infrastructure for the agentic economy, we want to hear from you. You'll have the opportunity to work on challenging problems that have never been solved before, with a team that's defining an entirely new category of financial services. This is more than a job; it's a chance to be part of the startup team that makes the AI economy possible. Your work will directly enable millions of AI agents to participate safely in commerce, unlocking trillions in economic value and increasing prosp