Role Purpose

411 Locals is seeking a Team Lead – Applied AI & Automation to oversee and drive the day-to-day execution of the team responsible for delivering practical, production-grade AI and automation solutions across the company.

This is a hands-on leadership role focused on execution, team productivity, proactive problem-solving, and measurable impact. The Team Lead will directly manage a cross-functional pod of Developers, Business Analysts, and QA Engineers, ensuring that projects are delivered on time, maximize ROI, and directly accelerate operational efficiency. You will champion a culture of practical innovation within your pod, driving the team to proactively identify business inefficiencies and design automated resolutions before they become critical bottlenecks. You will be responsible not only for the output of the team but also for the continuous skill development and growth of each team member.

Scope & Responsibilities

1. Team Management & Productivity Tracking

Day-to-Day Oversight: Lead daily standups, assign tasks, clear blockers, and manage the sprint capacity of the Applied AI & Automation team.
Activity & Productivity Metrics: Establish and track clear team productivity benchmarks, including sprint velocity, ticket turnaround time, code deployment frequency, and QA bug-leakage rates.
Operational Discipline: Enforce strict SDLC practices, ensuring the team balances execution speed with technical accountability.

2. Proactive Solutioning & Practical Innovation

Proactive Issue Identification: Lead the team in analyzing operational data, system workflows, and user feedback to proactively discover manual bottlenecks, high-cost processes, and operational risks.
Innovative Design: Encourage a culture of practical innovation where the team designs creative, business-driven AI and automation solutions to resolve real-world pain points.
Continuous System Improvement: Direct the team to constantly iterate and optimize existing workflows, transforming outdated legacy operations into highly accelerated, modern processes.

3. ROI Ownership & Value Delivery

Measurable Business Impact: Ensure every automation and AI system delivered by the team results in a quantifiable Return on Investment (ROI).
Post-Deployment Evaluation: Track and report on post-launch metrics, measuring the concrete financial and operational value of the team’s output, such as manual hours saved, error rate reduction, and cost savings.
Resource Optimization: Align team effort with high-value priorities, ensuring engineering hours are spent on initiatives with the highest potential ROI and business impact.

4. Mentorship & Team Member Development

Capability Building: Actively coach and mentor Developers, Business Analysts, and QA Engineers to elevate their technical expertise, innovative thinking, and business acumen.
Career Growth: Conduct regular 1-on-1s, set clear performance objectives, and design individual development plans to foster career progression within the team.
Culture of Ownership: Cultivate an environment where team members think in outcomes rather than just tickets, encouraging them to fully own the life cycle of their systems.

5. End-to-End Execution & Quality Assurance

Unified Pipeline: Oversee the integrated execution pipeline from business requirements translation (BA) to technical development (Dev) and robust testing (QA).
Production Stability: Ensure the systems built by the team are reliable, observable, and easily supported post-deployment. Drive the team to minimize system fragility and downtime.

Knowledge & Experience

Required

5+ years of experience in software engineering, workflow automation, or applied AI roles.
2+ years of experience leading or mentoring cross-functional technical teams (Dev + BA + QA).
Proven track record of managing team sprint delivery and driving high developer productivity.
Demonstrated experience in proactive problem-solving, with examples of identifying organizational bottlenecks and successfully pitching or implementing automated solutions.
Strong understanding of automation frameworks, APIs, integrations, and the practical implementation of AI/ML models.
A strong financial and metric-driven mindset with experience tracking project ROI.
Experience supporting digital marketing, sales, or call-center ecosystems is a strong plus.

Preferred

Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies and project management tools (e.g., Jira).
Comfortable managing remote teams across a high-growth, fast-changing environment.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Team Productivity & Activity: Sprint velocity, delivery predictability, and deployment frequency.
Proactive Impact & Innovation: Number of business issues proactively identified and resolved by the team, alongside the scale of practical innovation introduced to current processes.
Project ROI: Quantifiable cost savings, error reduction, and hours reclaimed through team-built automations.
Team Member Development: Upskilling progression, completion of development goals, and team retention.
System Reliability: Uptime, incident frequency, and regression rates of the team’s deployments.

Team Lead – Applied AI & Automation