Independent Board Director (ML-Driven Product & Data Platform Leader)

At Appodeal, we’re more than just a company—we’re a team united by a common mission: Help people discover and grow their talents through products that enable successful mobile app businesses!

We take pride in our cutting-edge product and our internationally dispersed team of talented professionals.

Here’s what we value, and what we hope you do too:

• Seek the Truth and Say It with Care: We find the truth together, and nobody owns it, the CEO included. Stories, perspectives and beliefs can be personal. Facts can’t.
• Leverage Data to Build Product: Our decisions start from data. We build systems rather than one-off tasks, use AI agents in our daily work and automate whatever is manual. When numbers don’t match, we fix them.
• We Work Together to Serve Others: No closed doors between teams. We share what we learn and win as one company first.
• Insist on Higher Standards: We don’t settle for “good enough”. We question it and push for better.
• Passionate Curiosity Fuels Perseverance: We ask “why”, take on ambiguous problems and keep going when they get hard.
• Lean Startup Mentality: Start Small, Iterate Quickly: Think big, ship an MVP first and learn fast. No big-bang releases.
• Ownership and Accountability: We work in small squads so each team owns its result end to end and has the freedom to get there. Go deep in your craft and wide enough to own the whole outcome. Escalate blockers early, admit mistakes, fix the damage and learn.

We are seeking an independent board director with deep experience operating ML-driven products and data platforms at scale.

This role is not focused on academic research or algorithm development. Instead, we are looking for a leader who has built organizations where data, experimentation, and machine learning directly drive product decisions, optimization, and revenue growth.

The ideal candidate brings expertise in areas such as:

• building strong data science organizations;
• designing data platforms and experimentation infrastructure;
• integrating ML into product decision loops;
• developing operating cultures built around data and experimentation;

This is a non-executive board position, not an operating role.

Appodeal is building a performance-driven technology platform powered by data and machine learning.

Our systems rely on:

• large-scale data pipelines;
• real-time decision systems;
• automated optimization;
• experimentation and model iteration.

The company operates an ecosystem including:

• advertising infrastructure;
• demand-side platform (DSP);
• supply-side platform (SSP);
• mobile game publishing and development.

Machine learning and data infrastructure are core to the company’s long-term competitive advantage.

The mission of this role is to strengthen the board’s ability to guide the company in building a world-class data and machine learning organization.

The director will contribute a perspective on:

• structuring and scaling data science teams;
• designing experimentation-driven product cultures;
• building high-quality data platforms and infrastructure;
• integrating ML systems into business decision processes;
• best practices for data-driven product development;
• organizational structures that allow ML systems to improve continuously.

This role focuses on how ML-driven companies operate, rather than on the underlying algorithms themselves.

Board members are expected to:

• →Participate in quarterly board meetings;
• →Provide independent strategic guidance to the CEO and leadership team;
• →Contribute to discussions around data platform strategy and ML-driven product development;
• →Provide perspective on organizational structure for data science and ML teams;
• →Help evaluate major technical and infrastructure investments;
• →Share insight from companies where ML directly drives business outcomes;
• →Board members are not involved in day-to-day operations.

We are looking for individuals who bring:

• deep experience running ML-driven product organizations:
• strong operational judgment;
• experience building data-driven engineering cultures;
• an independent mindset;
  willingness to challenge assumptions constructively.
  
  

Estimated commitment: approximately four weeks per year. This includes preparation and participation in board meetings as well as occasional strategic discussions with the leadership team.