AI and Automations Lead

Santa Barbara Management is a firm that reimagines the family office experience and serves accomplished founders and investors. They are seeking an AI and Automations Lead to identify workflows that can be automated and to build and deploy technology solutions that enhance the efficiency of their team.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with senior leadership to develop and execute an ambitious strategy of building and deploying AI in a complex, people-driven, services category underpenetrated by technology
• Transform discovery and deep understanding of business context into a technology roadmap for SBM's automation and agent layer
• Own the suite of internal tools at SBM, ensuring that everything we build or buy fits into a coherent, integrated architecture
• Treat security as foundational – data access, model permissions, and audit trails are integrated into what you build by default
• Move from discovery to deployed product fast with the understanding that the standard is not an interesting prototype, but a tool the team uses every day
• Embed with SBM's client teams and functional specialists to understand workflows at the task level – how long they take, how often they recur, and what judgment they actually require – and build in close collaboration with end users on a daily basis
• Target workflows that consume the most execution time across the firm and devise technology-first solutions that change how SBM operates
• Select the right approach for each problem across custom applications built on frontier models, workflow automation platforms, direct API integrations, or combinations thereof and own every deployed tool end-to-end from build through maintenance
• Onboard the team on every new automation, gather real feedback after launch, and iterate quickly
• Maintain hands-on command of developments in AI agents, frontier models, and automation tooling
• Run fast, time-boxed experiments on promising new capabilities and produce clear go/no-go recommendations, not open-ended explorations
• Serve as SBM's internal authority on what AI agents can and cannot do today, so the firm makes well-calibrated bets rather than underinvesting in what is proven or overbuilding on foundations that aren't stable