AI Ops Application Operations Lead

Role Overview

The AI Ops Application Operations Lead owns the production lifecycle of agentic coding applications, plugins, and skills across Zeta. The role helps teams move high-value prototypes into production and keeps applications reliable, useful, governed, and measurable after launch.

This role partners closely with application owners, AI Operations, IT, Security, and other technical teams. Its primary focus is production readiness, lifecycle and release management, feedback loops, and clear visibility into adoption, performance, and business impact.

The ideal candidate combines application operations, technical program management, and product fluency. They do not need to be the primary developer for every application, but they must be comfortable working with AI-assisted development tools, understanding application architecture, translating business needs into technical requirements, and coordinating work across stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Production Readiness and Launch

• Partner with owners of agenticly coded applications to assess whether an application is ready to move from prototype to production.
• Establish and manage a consistent production-readiness process covering security, privacy, data access, architecture, user experience, support, monitoring, and documentation.
• Identify launch risks, dependencies, and gaps, and coordinate the work required to address them.
• Connect application owners with IT, Security, Data, Legal, and other teams involved in production approval and deployment.
• Develop launch plans, readiness checklists, support models, and ownership documentation for each application.
• Ensure applications have clear business objectives, target users, success measures, and accountable owners before launch.

Application Operations and Lifecycle Management

• Manage the ongoing operational health of production applications.
• Maintain a prioritized backlog of fixes, enhancements, and technical improvements based on direction from the application owner.
• Coordinate application updates, testing, release management, and communication to users.
• Help ensure applications remain compatible with changes to models, APIs, enterprise systems, data sources, and security requirements.
• Establish clear escalation paths for defects, incidents, access issues, and performance concerns.
• Maintain accurate documentation for application functionality, dependencies, ownership, and support procedures.

Feedback, Adoption, and Continuous Improvement

• Help application owners establish structured feedback loops with users.
• Collect and organize user feedback, feature requests, defects, and usage insights.
• Translate feedback into clear product requirements and backlog items.
• Support application owners in prioritizing improvements based on user value, business impact, risk, and effort.
• Coordinate user testing and validation before major releases.
• Identify common patterns across applications that could inform shared standards, reusable components, or broader AI Ops priorities.

Measurement and Analytics

• Develop and maintain dashboards that provide application owners with visibility into adoption, usage, reliability, performance, and business outcomes.
• Define appropriate metrics for each application, including active users, usage frequency, task completion, response quality, errors, latency, user satisfaction, and estimated time or cost savings.
• Monitor application health and surface risks, adoption gaps, and improvement opportunities.
• Partner with application owners to review performance regularly and agree on actions.
• Help determine whether applications should be expanded, redesigned, consolidated, or retired based on evidence.

Governance, Standards, and Portfolio Management

• Apply AI Ops standards for application development, production readiness, responsible AI, security, documentation, and measurement.
• Help create reusable templates, checklists, playbooks, and operating procedures for agentic coding applications.
• Support the development of a governed application portfolio and inventory.
• Ensure applications have clear ownership, approved data access, defined user groups, and appropriate controls.
• Promote consistency across applications while allowing teams to move quickly and iterate.

Key Outcomes

Success in this role will be measured by:

• Increased percentage of high-value prototypes successfully moved into production.

• Reduced time from prototype completion to production launch.

• Stronger production readiness and fewer post-launch issues.

• Clear ownership and support models for every production application.

• Consistent visibility into application adoption, reliability, and business impact.

• Faster response to user feedback and application issues.

• Increased adoption and sustained usage of production applications.

• A well-managed portfolio of applications aligned to business priorities and enterprise standards.

Qualifications

Required

• Experience in application operations, technical program management, product operations, product management, or a closely related role.
• Strong ability to coordinate work across business, product, engineering, IT, security, and data teams.
• Experience taking internal digital products, AI applications, or technology solutions from prototype through production launch.
• Ability to translate business requirements into clear technical and operational requirements.
• Strong backlog management, prioritization, documentation, and release management skills.
• Experience defining product metrics and building or managing performance dashboards.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Comfort working in a fast-moving environment with evolving tools, standards, and priorities

Preferred

• Experience with AI-assisted software development, low-code tools, or agentic coding platforms.
• Familiarity with modern AI models, APIs, agents, workflow automation, and application architectures.
• Experience working with enterprise security, privacy, identity, access management, and software governance processes.
• Familiarity with analytics tools, application monitoring, user telemetry, and experimentation.
• Experience supporting internal enterprise applications or employee productivity tools.
• Working knowledge of software development practices, including testing, deployment, version control, and incident management.

Core Capabilities

• Application operations and lifecycle management
• Technical program management
• Stakeholder coordination
• Production readiness
• Backlog and release management
• User feedback, adoption, and continuous improvement
• Application analytics and measurement
• Risk and dependency management
• Technical fluency
• Clear communication and documentation

Role Profile

This role is well suited for someone who enjoys turning early-stage prototypes into dependable, scalable applications. They are comfortable operating between business and technology teams, creating structure where processes are still developing, and helping application owners make decisions based on user feedback and performance data.

The successful candidate will be practical, organized, technically curious, and focused on measurable outcomes. They will know when to move quickly, when to slow down to address risk, and how to keep application owners and technical teams aligned throughout the application lifecycle.

Company Summary

Zeta Global is a data-powered marketing technology company with a heritage of innovation and industry leadership. Founded in 2007 by entrepreneur David A. Steinberg and John Sculley, former CEO of Apple Inc and Pepsi-Cola, the Company combines the industry’s 3rd largest proprietary data set (2.4B+ identities) with Artificial Intelligence to unlock consumer intent, personalize experiences and help our clients drive business growth.

Our technology runs on the Zeta Marketing Platform, which powers ‘end to end’ marketing programs for some of the world’s leading brands. With expertise encompassing all digital marketing channels – Email, Display, Social, Search and Mobile – Zeta orchestrates acquisition and engagement programs that deliver results that are scalable, repeatable and sustainable.

Zeta Global is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race,

gender, ancestry, color, religion, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, medical condition, disability, veterans status, or any other basis protected by law.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Zeta Global Recognized in Enterprise Marketing Software and Cross-Channel Campaign Management Reports by Independent Research Firm.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2024/06/1G/amazon-partners-with-zeta-global-to-deliver- gen-ai-marketing-automation/

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/05/06/zeta-global-ceo-david-steinberg-talks-ai-in-focus-at-milken- conference.html

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240G04622808/en/Zeta-Increases-3Q%E2%80%GG24-Guidance

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zeta-global-opens-ai--data-labs-in-san-francisco-and-nyc- 300S45353.html

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zeta-global-recognized-in-enterprise-marketing-software-and-cross-channel-campaign-management-reports-by-independent-research-firm-300S38241.html