Prose on Pixels - Technical Director - AI Studio (H/F/X) - Freelance

Languages

French / English (spoken and written)

Location

Pantin

Role overview

A key and structuring role at the heart of the AI Studio team, reporting to the AI Studio Director. The Technical Director takes ownership of the day-to-day technical execution of vermeer.ai, Havas Group’s AI-powered creative production platform. They ensure the robustness, scalability, security and performance of the solutions developed, while actively contributing to technology decisions and the continuous evolution of the platform.

Technical context

Vermeer.ai is an AI generation platform (image, video, audio, 3D) used in production by Havas Group agencies worldwide. The technical environment is built around two complementary stacks:

• Application Stack (light)

o Frontend: Next.js / Vercel

o Backend & data: Supabase (PostgreSQL, Auth, Storage, Edge Functions)

o Deployment: Vercel (built-in CI/CD, preview environments)

• Infrastructure & Compute Stack (heavy)

o Backend: Python / FastAPI

o Task orchestration: Celery, SQS

o Infrastructure: AWS (EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, GPU autoscaling), EKS (Kubernetes)

o Containerisation: Docker

o Monitoring & observability: CloudWatch, centralised logging

The current technical team includes full-stack developers, back-end engineers, DevOps and QA Engineer. The team is growing and requires a hands-on technical lead on a daily basis.

Responsibilities

• Architecture and Development

o Maintain and evolve the overall architecture: multi-modal generation pipelines, APIs, AI workflow orchestration, GPU queue management.

o Develop directly when needed (POCs, critical components, refactoring, pipeline optimisation).

o Design integrations with new models and partners (evaluation, qualification, API integration).

o Structure and document technical environments (dev / staging / preprod / prod).

o Ensure code quality: reviews, testing, maintainability, conventions.

• Infrastructure, Performance and Security

o Manage the cloud infrastructure: GPU scaling, cost optimisation, monitoring, performance.

o Establish and maintain standards for security, resilience, observability and alerting.

o Ensure GDPR compliance and best practices for data management (client assets, prompts, outputs, model hosting, IP).

o Guarantee the reliability of production tools (internal and external clients).

• AI, Innovation and Technology Watch

o Master and integrate AI model APIs (image, video, audio, LLM generation).

o Test and qualify new models, frameworks and AI stacks.

o Collaborate closely with the R&D team on advanced topics (vision, generation, experimental pipelines).

o Maintain continuous technology watch across the AI ecosystem (open-source and proprietary).

• Technical Leadership and Operational Management

o Serve as the technical reference for the team: unblock, guide, and upskill team members.

o Contribute to build / buy / partner decisions.

o Prioritise technical initiatives in alignment with the product roadmap.

o Run team rituals (planning, reviews, documentation).

o Track key metrics: response times, uptime, cost per usage, GPU performance.

• Driving the AI Transformation of the Development Team

o The development team is currently in the integration phase of AI tools and practices into its daily workflows. The Technical Director supports this transition by structuring the adoption of AI code assistants, automated generation pipelines and AI-augmented development methodologies.

o Identify acceleration levers: code generation, AI-assisted review, automated testing, rapid prototyping via AI.

o Train and mentor developers in the effective use of these tools, establishing best practices suited to a production environment.

o Evolve team processes to fully leverage AI as a delivery accelerator, while maintaining quality and security standards.

Candidate profile

A hands-on profile, capable of working directly on architecture, code and infrastructure, while structuring the team’s technical practices. Comfortable in a hybrid environment: R&D, production, clients, experimentation.

• Experience

o 8+ years of experience in technical direction or senior technical leadership on complex products or platforms.

o Significant experience with SaaS / API / high-traffic platforms.

o Concrete experience in AI / data / compute-intensive environments strongly valued.

• Technical Skills (hands-on)

o Cloud & Infrastructure:

▪ AWS (EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, EKS, autoscaling, monitoring).

▪ Strong understanding of GPU / distributed compute challenges and associated cost optimisation.

o Back-end & API:

▪ Python (required).

▪ FastAPI or equivalent modern performance-oriented framework.

▪ Celery, SQS or equivalent asynchronous task orchestration systems.

▪ Design of robust, secure and well-documented APIs.

o Software Architecture:

▪ Micro-services, API-first, asynchronous pipelines.

▪ AI workflow orchestration.

▪ Kubernetes (EKS) and Docker containerisation.

o AI & Models:

▪ Integration of AI model APIs (image, video, audio, LLM).

▪ Understanding of generative model constraints (latency, cost, quality, versioning).

o DevOps:

▪ CI/CD, containerisation, monitoring and logging.

o Security:

▪ Access management, data and asset protection, GDPR best practices.

• Soft Skills

o Natural leadership and technical authority.

o Strong ability to teach and explain.

o Pragmatic, solution-oriented and delivery-focused mindset.

o Ability to communicate with creative, product and business profiles.

o Strong appetite for innovation and fast-moving environments.

Why join us

• A production-grade AI platform used at the scale of a global group.

• A rich technical environment: generative models, GPU orchestration, multi-modal pipelines, large-scale cloud infrastructure.

• A lean, senior team with direct impact on the product.

• A constantly evolving domain at the intersection of AI, creativity and production.