Innovation Technology Manager

Cheil USA/Dallas/TechOps/Innovation Technology

Innovation Technology Manager

About the Role

We're hiring an Innovation Technology Manager to lead one of three vertical teams inside our Innovation Technology department. This team is responsible for building out innovative, frontier technology for client work and new business pitches: AI integration, 3D/WebGL experiences, interactive experiential, and embedded-systems integrations.

The Innovation Technology Manager will take ownership of an existing product and multiple projects, keep delivery moving, and raise the bar on what the Tech Innovation department ships.

You will operate as both a technical leader and a people manager. Half the job is roadmap, architecture, and hands-on technical judgment, and the other half is performance management, cross-functional communication, and making sure your team has what it needs to do great work. You will report to the Director of Technology.

What You'll Own

Product & Roadmap

• Own the platform roadmap end-to-end, including feature prioritization, release planning, and technical debt management.
• Own the creative-technology project pipeline, including scoping, scheduling, and resourcing 3D/WebXR and interactive frontend engagements.
• Make build-vs-buy and technology-selection decisions for your team's domain.

Technical Leadership

• Conduct technical feasibility assessments for incoming project briefs and new-business opportunities.
• Serve as the client-facing technical point of contact on innovation project work, translating business requirements into engineering plans and presenting technical approaches to non-technical stakeholders.
• Provide technical scoping support for new-business pitches, including effort estimation and architecture proposals.
• Set and maintain code-quality standards, review cadence, and documentation expectations within your team.

People Management

• Manage, mentor, and develop three individual contributors with distinct specializations (full-stack/mobile, 3D/WebXR, interactive frontend).
• Run planning, standups, and retrospectives for the Innovation Technology Team.
• Own performance reviews, growth plans, and day-to-day coaching.
• Advocate for your team's capacity, tooling, and professional development needs.

Cross-Team Coordination

• Coordinate release and QA processes with the Technical Delivery Manager and QA Engineer.
• Collaborate with the Platform Engineering Team where platforms intersect (e.g., shared AI/ML capabilities, prompt-engineering libraries).
• Surface cross-team dependencies and resource conflicts to the Director of Technology proactively.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a management or team-lead role directly responsible for engineers' performance and growth.
• Strong technical fluency across the modern tech ecosystems, able to evaluate architectural decisions, review pull requests, and unblock engineers across React, React Native, Node.js, and related tooling.
• Demonstrated experience scoping and delivering project-based technical work on timelines set by non-engineering stakeholders (clients, producers, creative directors).
• Experience owning a product or platform roadmap, not just executing tickets, but deciding what gets built and why.
• Comfort operating as a client-facing technical representative, able to walk a room through a technical approach without losing the non-technical audience.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to produce clear technical specs, SOWs, and project documentation.

Preferred

• Experience with React and mobile deployment pipelines (Android and/or iOS).
• Familiarity with gamification mechanics (task/point/reward systems, engagement loops) or consumer-facing product design.
• Exposure to 3D/WebGL technologies (Three.js, React Three Fiber, WebXR APIs) or embedded-systems integration; you don't need to be the expert, but understanding the domain enough to manage and scope the work is valuable.
• Experience with AI/ML integration at the application layer (RAG, LLM APIs, prompt engineering) enough to collaborate effectively with the AI/ML engineer on cross-team features.
• Background in an agency, studio, or professional-services environment where work is a mix of owned products and client-driven projects.
• Familiarity with agile delivery practices in small teams (8-15 people), especially where process needs to stay lightweight.

What Success Looks Like

First 90 days:

• Full ownership product roadmap with a documented backlog and prioritization framework.
• Working relationships established with all three direct reports, the Director of Technology, and peer managers (Platform Engineering, Technical Delivery, Creative Directors, Group Account Directors, etc).
• At least one project-based engagement scoped and in progress.

First 6 months:

• Platform has a visible, measurable improvement in release cadence or feature throughput.
• At least one pilot has been used in a new-business pitch.
• QA sign-off is integrated into the Innovation Technology Team's release process.

First 12 months:

• All platforms have a named owner and a documented backup path.
• The team is operating with clear engineering standards, consistent sprint rhythms, and measurable velocity.
• Cross-team collaboration patterns with Platform Engineering and Technical Delivery are routine and low-friction.

Why This Role Matters

This team sits at the intersection of owned-product development and client-facing innovation technology, the part of an agency that's structurally hard for clients to in-house and hard for holding companies to out-scale. The Innovation Technology Manager is the person who makes that positioning real by shipping work that wins pitches, retains clients, and builds IP the agency owns outright.

This is a leadership seat at a department that's being built to be the agency's competitive differentiator.