Zaigo builds AI software for real businesses.
Not demos. Not slide decks. Actual tools that people use to run parts of their company.
Our clients are owner-led, mid-market and PE-backed companies in the US: professional services firms, distributors, manufacturers, healthcare operators, finance teams. They have messy workflows, old systems, weird data, and very little patience for theory. We build the AI roadmap with them, then we build the whole thing.
We are based in New York, with engineering teams in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and we are growing fast.
We are looking for a Principal, AI Transformation. The senior person on the call who owns the client: sits with the CEO, shapes what we should build, runs the pod that builds it, and builds with AI themselves when that is the fastest way to show what is possible.
Principals own our most important client relationships.
If you want to manage from a distance, this probably is not the job. If you like owning the client, the plan and the outcome, and you would rather show a CEO a working prototype than a deck, it might be.
What the work looks like
You own a portfolio of client accounts end to end. You lead pods of US-based Engagement Leads, who keep delivery on track, and senior developers in Eastern Europe and Latin America, who build. You work directly with the founders.
A normal day might start with a CEO and their leadership team walking you through where the business loses time and money. After lunch you sketch the roadmap and pick the first thing worth building. By the end of the week a working prototype is in front of them, often one you built yourself with Claude Code or Cursor, and the pod is turning it into the real system inside their environment.
Then you keep going. You make sure what we shipped gets used, you find the next problem worth solving, and you grow the account.
Recent projects include:
- 01a document review tool that checks presentations against a firm's brand and compliance rules
- 02a benchmarking platform built from years of public company filings
- 03payroll and operations tools that clean messy data and produce files people can actually use
- 04internal AI agents that help teams move faster without giving the model dangerous autonomy
You do not need to be a trained engineer. You do need to build with AI and be able to tell good work from bad.
Who we are looking for
- 01You have owned outcomes with senior clients, or as a founder. CEOs, owners and PE operating partners trust you quickly.
- 02Executive presence. Clear, confident and calm. You think on your feet and push back when the client is wrong.
- 03Product judgment and taste. You understand how companies make money, where the workflow pain is, and what people will actually adopt. You pick the idea that matters.
- 04You build with AI yourself. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, agents. You can get a working version in front of a client fast.
- 05You can hold your own with a client's IT team. Azure, AWS or GCP. Entra or Okta. Fabric, Snowflake or Databricks. You do not need to configure them, but you follow the conversation and know what matters.
- 06You move fast and carry a big load without dropping things.
- 07Bonus points if you have founded a company, run product at a startup, or led engagements at a consultancy or AI services firm, and gone deep on AI in the last year.
Who should not apply
This is probably not the right role if you want to manage from a distance, hand everything to engineers, or write strategy decks that nobody builds.
It is also probably not right if your AI experience is mostly prompting ChatGPT or talking about agents without building anything.
We need someone who can own a client completely.
Pay and location
- 01We are profitable and bootstrapped, so pay is a strong base salary plus real performance bonuses tied to targets.
- 02NYC hybrid, or remote in the US.
- 03This role requires authorization to work in the US. We're not able to sponsor visas.
- 04Full-time.