Zapier, which sells automation software, chose its own Chief People Officer, Brandon Sammut, for its first AI transformation job. The company announced his new title, Chief People & AI Transformation Officer, in October 2025.
The appointment illustrates a pattern appearing around AI work inside companies. One team builds the AI features, tools and product experiences customers see. Any company that sells AI products, or has AI features inside its product, needs people who can design, ship and maintain that work. It is technical work, close to product and engineering. Another team builds the operating habits that let people and AI work through repeatable processes. The two are connected, but they ask for different strengths.
That second team works out how work should run once AI is part of the process, a field known as AI operations. Its people are strong at systems, standards, handoffs and repeatable workflows. Their job is to turn messy work into processes clear enough to delegate, measure and improve, so that AI can handle defined parts of it reliably. The background suits people who have built processes for humans in operations, people teams, internal systems or process design. Those functions have long made human work more structured, and the same skill applies to work that is partly handled by AI.
Zapier’s own account of the job fits that second team. The company says it created the role to connect people, systems and strategy as it changes how work happens with AI. That language sits closer to operating design than to product engineering, and it treats AI as something the organisation has to use well across teams. A people leader got the work because the task was tied to how the organisation learns, adopts tools and changes daily habits.
Roles in AI operations and AI transformation let people work in AI without becoming engineers, especially where the job description talks about systems, processes, people and operating rhythm. Those jobs ask for evidence of process judgement. The profile is someone who knows how tasks move through a business, where a process breaks down and how to make a better one stick.
