Lead AI Engineer

Job Summary
Our client is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to drive the development and evolution of enterprise AI capabilities. This highly visible role blends technical leadership and hands-on expertise to deliver scalable, production-grade AI solutions, including agentic AI, RAG, and intelligent automation technologies that create business value and accelerate digital transformation.

Key Details

• Work Arrangement: Hybrid, three days per week onsite, Monday or Friday mandatory
• Strong potential for conversion based on performance and business need

Core Responsibilities

• Design, build, deploy, and support enterprise-scale AI solutions in production environments
• Develop agentic workflows, orchestration pipelines, tool integrations, and autonomous AI capabilities
• Build and evolve RAG and agent-based architectures that deliver measurable business value
• Create and maintain evaluation frameworks to improve AI quality, groundedness, reliability, and performance
• Implement AI observability, tracing, monitoring, and operational best practices
• Develop automated testing, validation, and regression processes for AI systems
• Integrate AI solutions with enterprise applications, APIs, and data platforms
• Design reusable frameworks, patterns, and components to increase scalability and engineering efficiency
• Establish and promote engineering best practices through code reviews and technical mentorship
• Research, evaluate, and adopt emerging AI technologies where appropriate
• Partner with business stakeholders, architects, and engineers to translate business requirements into innovative AI solutions
• Provide technical leadership and guidance on AI platform strategy and architecture decisions

Required Skills/Experience (Must-Haves)

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of software engineering experience
• Proven track record delivering enterprise-grade software solutions in production environments
• Experience building and delivering production-grade agentic AI systems
• Strong Python development experience combined with AI platform engineering expertise
• Experience designing, deploying, operating, monitoring, and evaluating production AI systems
• Hands-on experience implementing agentic AI workflows and autonomous systems
• Experience designing and implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions
• Experience with Databricks
• Experience with LangGraph or similar agent orchestration frameworks
• Experience building AI workflows utilizing tools, APIs, and external systems
• Experience implementing AI evaluation frameworks and quality measurement methodologies
• Experience with AI observability, tracing, and monitoring solutions
• Strong understanding of agent architecture patterns, prompt engineering, and LLM evaluation techniques
• Experience with AWS in production environments
• Experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs
• Experience utilizing Git, CI/CD pipelines, and modern software engineering practices
• Knowledge of secure coding principles and responsible AI practices
• Experience working within Agile development environments

Preferred Skills/Experience (Nice-to-Haves)

• Experience with AgentBricks
• Experience with Microsoft Copilot extensibility and agent development
• Experience with LangChain and related AI frameworks
• Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations
• Experience with vector databases and semantic search technologies
• Experience with AWS Bedrock
• Experience with OpenTelemetry, LangSmith, Grafana, MLflow, DeepEval, or similar tooling
• Experience deploying and managing multi-agent systems
• Experience with Terraform
• AWS, Databricks, Microsoft, or AI-related certifications
• Demonstrated experience mentoring teammates and contributing to collaborative engineering environments

Key Competencies & Behaviors

• Business Outcome Focused
• Scalable Innovation Balance
• Ownership & Accountability
• Holistic Systems Thinking
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
• Team-Oriented Mentor

Work Environment

• Employment Type: Contract-to-Hire
• Location: St. Louis, MO
• Work Arrangement: Hybrid
• Onsite Requirement: Three days per week in office
• Scheduling Requirement: One of the onsite days must be either Monday or Friday
• Interview Process: Initial virtual interview followed by an onsite interview
• Conversion Goal: The organization intends to convert the right candidate based on performance, culture fit, and business needs

Compensation & Benefits

• Pay Range: The approximate pay range for this position is between $63.00 and $90.00. Please note that the pay range provided is a good faith estimate. Final compensation may vary based on factors including but not limited to background, knowledge, skills, and location. We comply with local wage minimums.
• Medical, Dental, & Vision Insurance Plans
• Employee-Owned Profit Sharing (ESOP)
• 401K offered