Head of Instrumentation & AI
Remote
Full-time
US-based
The poultry industry has always struggled to get high-quality commercial data, and nothing is harder to measure than welfare. Most of what we think we know about welfare technology rests on small university studies that don't look like commercial production and take years to run. The data that actually matters has simply been too hard to capture at scale. But that’s changing: new AI tools around continuous sensing, machine vision, and robotics are giving us the ability to measure welfare at the level of the individual bird, and to run rigorous experiments against those measurements. Your job is to build a new, AI-native technology stack for observing and understanding animal welfare under real production conditions.
This is a full-time, exempt position with travel within the United States.
Responsibilities
• Own the technology strategy: the AI-native monitoring and data infrastructure (cameras, sensors, bird-level tracking, environmental telemetry) that is the backbone for every trial we run.
• Make build/buy/partner decisions across the tech stack—including for hardware that can survive real barn conditions—and integrate components into one coherent, reusable system rather than a pile of point solutions.
• Work with the Program Team to build the pipeline of external technologies we test (robotics, computer vision, vaccines, feed additives, etc.)—assess readiness, design the integration, and render clear go/no-go judgments.
• Build the data platform and standards so results are clean, comparable, and reusable across trials.
• Build the technical team. Make the first engineering and data hires, decide what we hold in-house versus contract or partner for, and convene the outside expertise we don't have.
• Understand and interface with the systems already in a working barn (control units, feed lines, ventilation) and lead the technical side of infrastructure upgrades.
• Own our IP strategy on the technology side: identify genuinely novel inventions and file patents opportunistically, and manage licensing and ownership terms with technology partners.
About you:
• A technical generalist. Broad working knowledge across AI/ML, computer vision, sensing, data infrastructure, and hardware, rather than deep specialization in one. You're comfortable being the person who understands how the whole system fits together, and you know how and when to bring in a specialist.
• You use AI to put structure on messy things. The core of this job is taking something complicated and poorly measured (a barn full of animals) and turning it into clean, quantitative, decision-grade data.
• A 0-to-1 builder. You've developed a technical roadmap and built a working system from nothing.
• AI-native. You design from the assumption that AI and data are the foundation, not an add-on. You keep up with the latest developments in AI and physical AI. You can look at the current generation of precision livestock farming tools and see how to do better.
• Physical-world experience is a plus. Ideally you've built systems that were commercially deployed in physical, uncontrolled environments like farms, factories, or field hardware.
• A team builder. You've hired and led small technical teams, and you know how to keep the bar high.
• A fast learner of new domains, who wants to be on the farm. You don't need a poultry background, but you do need to get up to speed on broiler production and welfare quickly, and earn the trust of people who've spent their careers in it.
• Mission-aligned. You care about animal welfare and want to spend your effort improving it—drawn to an evidence-first, industry-facing approach.
• A translator. You can talk to a barn manager, a machine-learning engineer, a startup founder, and a philanthropic funder in the same week—and convene people who don't normally talk to each other.
Innovate Animal Ag is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply—if you're excited about this role but aren't sure you meet every qualification, we'd still love to hear from you.
Apply Here:
https://innovateanimalag.org/careers#open-roles