AI Development Editor

About the Role

The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate are seeking an AI Development Editor to oversee the hands-on integration of artificial intelligence into new content products and newsroom tools and workflows. This role will collaborate with reporters and editors to identify opportunities where AI can enhance journalism's power and efficiency. The position involves building, testing, and maintaining AI pipelines, ensuring accuracy and transparency in AI-assisted content, and training colleagues on tools. It combines technical expertise with journalistic judgment for responsible AI innovation. This is a supervisor-level position, intended to be a driving force for smart automation strategies.

Key Responsibilities

• Editorial Leadership
• Leverage AI in building utility products for consumers.
• Evaluate, pilot, and integrate generative AI and automation tools into the newsroom.
• Collaborate with the Senior Editor, Data and AI Innovation, to develop standards and best practices for AI use in reporting, editing, fact-checking, and audience engagement.
• Lead training sessions and provide support for editors and reporters using AI tools.
• Oversee the editorial work of AI developers across newsrooms.
• Innovation + Strategy
• Identify opportunities where AI can augment journalism (e.g., enhanced data collection, transcription, summarization, civic coverage, audience personalization).
• Stay abreast of industry developments and assess emerging tools, vendors, and partnerships.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams on internal tools to improve efficiency and enhance storytelling.
• Oversight + Governance
• Ensure AI applications align with ethical journalism standards and company AI policies.
• Establish guardrails for accuracy, sourcing, transparency, and human oversight of AI-assisted content.
• Audit and monitor newsroom AI use, providing regular updates to editorial leadership.
• Collaboration + Evangelism
• Serve as a point person for AI strategy across the newsroom.
• Partner with editorial leads to identify reporting beats where AI-assisted workflows can expand coverage.
• Act as a liaison with legal, HR, and executive leadership on responsible AI adoption.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Demonstrated experience experimenting with AI or automation tools in a journalistic context.
• Familiarity with generative AI platforms (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) and newsroom-focused tools (transcription, summarization, translation, meeting monitors).
• Technical literacy: ability to work with APIs, structured data, or scripting languages (Python, JavaScript) preferred.
• Expertise in prompt engineering.
• Excellent communication and training skills; able to translate technical concepts for nontechnical colleagues.
• Ability to self-manage and prioritize multiple projects simultaneously, meeting tight deadlines without compromising on quality.
• Commitment to ethical journalism, transparency, and accuracy.

Qualifications

• Ideal candidates will be able to showcase many of the following. We do not expect candidates to be proficient in every area.