---
title: 'Applied AI Lead at Madhive'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-lead-madhive-madhive-hq-new-york-5gdrdws437a5'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-14'
---

# Applied AI Lead at Madhive

- **Company:** Madhive
- **Location:** Madhive Hq New York, NY
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-07-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/madhive/686c74ec-83d6-4148-8ef8-cb8bc3b64b4c

## Job description

Madhive is the leading independent and fully customizable operating system built to help local media professionals build profitable, differentiated, and efficient businesses. Madhive empowers sales teams to extend their reach into streaming and connects local advertisers with the communities they serve. Madhive’s platform provides the unique ability to reach local audiences at national scale, with premium supply partnerships and end-to-end tools for planning, targeting, and measuring full-funnel campaign outcomes. Powering campaigns for over 30,000 small and medium businesses per day, Madhive is driving the evolution of local media. Applied AI Lead Reporting to the Chief Innovation Officer, the Applied AI Lead is the building muscle of Madhive's applied adtech innovation factory — turning identified needs into production-quality software at high velocity. This is a senior, startup-style role designed to transform identified needs into functional, production-quality software. As a fungible builder, you will surge across mandates, pairing with leadership to take innovative concepts from initial idea to load-bearing V1 releases. This role ensures the Office remains a dedicated building function rather than a strictly advisory one. This is a hybrid role, working 3 days a week at Madhive HQ in the Financial District of New York City.

## Key Responsibilities

- Lead zero-to-one builds, shipping production-quality prototypes in days rather than quarters.
- Develop reusable components and architectural patterns that can be leveraged by other leads and receiving teams.
- Maintain fungibility across various innovation mandates, addressing the highest weekly priorities with agility.
- Ship each V1 to production -- including load-bearing, and revenue-generating AI architecture then hand it off as a new innovation for the next team to build around.

## Qualifications & Experience

- Senior Builder Profile: 10+ years of experience or a founding/early-engineer background with a proven track record of shipping end-to-end software solo or with small teams.
- Zero-to-One Expertise: Demonstrated ability to take projects from a blank page to live users, with the ability to articulate the full loop of discovery, iteration, and customer metric movement (activation, retention, etc.).
- Tool Fluency: Broad, full-stack, and AI-native capabilities. Proficient in standing up production prototypes using agentic coding tools, AI coding agents, and eval/observability frameworks.
- Operational Style: High technical bar combined with grit in ambiguity. Low-ego and collaborative, with a focus on making surrounding teams better without creating territorial boundaries.
- Fresh Perspective: We prioritize innovators from outside the ad-tech category to bring fresh perspectives; prior ad-tech experience is specifically not required.

How Success is Measured Key Metric — Expansion (the Applied Adtech Innovation Factory): The Office runs as Madhive's forward-deployed applied innovation factory, and success is the new surface area it opens. We measure expansion across:

- Clients: new clients served and accounts deepened on the back of shipped V1s.
- Verticals: new verticals and use cases the factory opens up.
- Features: new revenue-generating features and load-bearing AI architecture put into production, then handed off seamlessly as platforms the next team builds around.
- Value per unit time — ours and clients': how fast the factory manufactures and hands off production-quality V1s (innovation output per builder, per cycle), and the revenue, new capability, and time-to-value those builds unlock for clients.

Location / Work Model Hybrid, NYC – 3 days in office, with travel to other Madhive locations as needed. The approximate compensation range for this position is $200,000-$225,000. The actual offer, reflecting the total compensation package and benefits, will be determined by a number of factors, including the applicant's experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity among our team. #LI-Hybrid

We are Madhive Madhive is a dynamic, diverse, innovative, and friendly place to work. We embrace our differences and believe they fuel our creativity. We come from varied backgrounds and think that’s important. Whether it’s taking ideas from previous lives and applying them in different ways or creating something completely new, we are all trail-blazing team players who think big and want to make an impact. We are committed to cultivating a culture of inclusion and collaboration. We welcome diversity in education, culture, opinions, race, ethnicity, gender identity, veteran status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and beliefs. Please be advised that we will NOT be using third-party recruiting agencies for this search.

## About Madhive

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Madhive is a fully customizable ad platform built to help local media professionals reach audiences through efficient, high-impact CTV and omnichannel campaigns.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series unknown; total funding $300M)
- **Headquarters**: New York, New York, United States
- **Founded**: Not publicly available (seed round in 2017, venture round in 2019)
- **Founders**: Not publicly available

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Advertising Services / Ad Tech (connected TV, local media)
- **Target customers**: B2B – local media professionals (broadcasters, agencies, sales teams), small and medium businesses (over 30,000 SMBs per day)
- **Mission or purpose**: Power local media’s evolution by putting innovative tools in the hands of local sellers, agencies, and more; making local advertising smarter and more effective.

## Products & Services
- **Madhive DSP (Demand-Side Platform)**: Unified platform for planning, activating, integrating, and measuring CTV campaigns across every screen. Engineered for local performance with granular control and massive reach.
- **Frequence (acquired)**: Omnichannel workflow software that adds full-service capabilities for local media clients, including tools for targeting sports, live streaming, and cross-channel campaigns.
- **Maverick AI (launched April 2025)**: Enterprise intelligence layer designed to accelerate media sales and drive advertiser outcomes.
- **Fraud Free Guarantee (June 2025)**: A transparency initiative setting a new standard for trust in local media, guaranteeing delivery in full.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue ~$50M (LinkedIn estimate); Total Funding $300M (latest round June 2023 led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Goldman Sachs Asset Management (lead in $300M private equity round); partners include Fox, Scripps, and top broadcasters; Samba TV (preferred ACR partner), Alliant (audience data).
- **Growth Signals**: Acquired Frequence in June 2024; launched Maverick AI in April 2025; launched Fraud Free Guarantee in June 2025; powers campaigns for over 30,000 SMBs daily; 260 employees with presence in US, India, Argentina, Philippines.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Local-first focus**: Only platform built specifically for local media, enabling national scale with local granularity.
- **Fraud Free Guarantee**: Industry-first promise that campaigns deliver in full, building trust with advertisers.
- **Premium supply partnerships**: Exclusive relationships with major broadcasters (Fox, Scripps) that competitors may not access.
- **End-to-end platform**: Combines planning, targeting, activation, measurement, and omnichannel capabilities (via Frequence) in one stack – “zero swivel.”
- **Maverick AI**: AI layer that accelerates sales and improves outcomes, a differentiator in the local ad tech space.

## Strategic Focus
- **Omnichannel expansion**: Integrating Frequence to offer a full-service solution beyond CTV (sports, live streaming, etc.).
- **AI-driven sales acceleration**: Leveraging Maverick AI to empower media sales teams and improve advertiser ROI.
- **Trust & transparency**: Promoting the Fraud Free Guarantee to differentiate in a market often plagued by ad fraud.
- **Scaling local reach**: Continuing to onboard broadcasters and agencies, with a goal of dominating the local CTV advertising market.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & values**: Emphasis on “maverick moves” (risk-taking, bold leadership), “hero your partners” (empathy and humility), “deliver the good” (community impact).
- **Compensation & benefits (US employees)**:
  - 100% company-covered health, dental, and vision insurance
  - 401(k) matching, company equity, performance bonuses
  - Unlimited vacation, generous parental leave
  - Free lunch in-office, commuter benefits
- **India employees**: Comprehensive group health insurance, equity, performance bonuses, free lunch.
- **Learning & development**: “Madhive University” with continuous training, workshops, and professional development.
- **Work environment**: Hybrid? Not explicitly stated, but offices in New York and India; free lunch suggests in-office presence. LinkedIn shows 260 employees with technical roles (64) and customer success (28).
- **Engineering culture**: Cutting-edge ad tech stack; roles include Senior Software Engineer, Principal Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Engineering Manager; emphasis on building intuitive solutions from complex technology.
- **Recent departures**: Some director-level turnover (Product, Data Operations) – typical in growth-stage companies.

## Sources
1. [Madhive.com](https://www.madhive.com/)
2. [Madhive About Us](https://www.madhive.com/about-us)
3. [Madhive Careers](https://www.madhive.com/careers)
4. [Madhive LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/madhive)
5. [Madhive Jobs (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/madhive)

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