Director Of AI Engineering

Director of AI Engineering

100% Remote (~ 25% travel)

This leader will build and run the team behind the reasoning layer of a large AI assistant that works across many kinds of devices. Youll set the technical plan, design the core systems, and still write code on the parts that matter most. The work covers AI agents, retrieval, memory, voice and vision input, and getting models to run well both on the device and in the cloud. Youll coach a group of experienced engineers and take new AI features from early idea to wide release.

-----Responsibilities

• Hire, grow, and lead the team that owns AI agents, model routing, tool use, retrieval, memory, knowledge graphs, and sensor based input.

• Take charge of designing and shipping language model platforms, agent systems, retrieval systems, orchestration tooling, and recommendation engines.

• Design how the AI layer splits work between models running on the device and models running in the cloud, including how requests move between models, how safety rules are applied, and how answers stay tied to the right context.

• Lead work on audio and visual understanding, including speech recognition, reading text from images, voice activation, and spotting the moments when the assistant should step in.

• Design and build engines that suggest a helpful next step to the user, working hand in hand with the teams that build the user experience.

• Make small and mid sized models faster and lighter through quantization, distillation, pruning, and tuning for specific hardware.

• Work with platform, cloud, site reliability, release, and user experience teams so AI services run fast, stay up, are easy to monitor, and fit cleanly with the rest of the system.

• Create and own the tests and release standards for AI features, covering retrieval accuracy, made up answers, grounding, and how dependably agents finish their tasks.

• Own the technical roadmap for the AI layer and weigh quick experiments against the stability needed for large releases.

• Coach experienced individual engineers working on agents, retrieval, memory, perception, and model tuning, and build a team where people work well together.

• Join researchers, designers, and product owners to dream up, test, and ship new agent features that mix voice, vision, and text across devices.

• Design and review distributed, cloud based systems that handle AI workloads for a very large number of users and devices.

• Review designs and code, and write code yourself on the most important pieces.

• Run the full life of AI products, from early tests and model integration through launch, monitoring, and ongoing improvement.

• Bring sr. leaders and partner teams into agreement on AI direction, priorities, and design choices.

• Move quickly on unclear problems, bring structure to them, and push important work forward with care and discipline.

-----Qualifications

Required

• 12+ years in software engineering building complex systems.

• 5+ years leading AI or machine learning teams, with principal and staff level engineers reporting to you.

• Has run groups made up of engineers, architects, and AI specialists on high stakes work.

• Still codes and can contribute directly to the codebase.

• Able to pass a coding test.

• Has shipped AI products to production at large scale.

• Has designed and run large systems spread across many cloud servers.

• Has supported products with a large base of users or devices, with a focus on speed and uptime.

• Strong design skills for full pipelines that move data into and out of AI models.

• Deep work with generative AI and language model applications running in production.

• Has built agents that call tools, chain steps together, and keep track of context.

• Has personally built retrieval augmented generation systems.

• Has worked with meaning based search and similar ways of finding information.

• Experience with orchestration tooling that handles routing across models, tool calls, and policy rules.

• Experience combining text, audio, images, and device signals in one AI system.

• Experience with computer vision, text recognition, and speech recognition pipelines.

• Working knowledge of reinforcement learning used inside AI systems.

• Experience using knowledge graphs for reasoning, context, and retrieval.

• Can lead and coach sr. AI engineers while staying hands on and technically respected.

• Can sway sr. leaders and partner teams on AI direction and design.

Preferred

• Has run production systems used by millions of people or devices.

• Has put AI models into products that real customers use.

• Experience with AI systems that run across both devices and the cloud.

• Comfortable on a small, fast moving team inside a large company.

• Balances leading the team with doing hands on technical work.

• Comfortable with unclear goals and good at setting priorities and getting work done.

• Teams up easily with researchers, designers, product owners, and platform engineers.

• Explains hard AI and design topics clearly to both technical and non technical people.

• Has set up test methods for AI systems, including measures for retrieval accuracy, made up answers, and grounding.

• Has grown AI platforms across several product lines.

-----Work Environment or Schedule

This is a remote role open to candidates across the United States, with travel about 25 percent of the time for team sessions, meetings with leadership, and in person work with partner teams. The team is spread across several locations and works closely with platform, cloud, reliability, and user experience groups. People here get a lot of freedom, regular contact with top leadership, and a say in AI direction, backed by the resources of a large company.

Skip the wait

Book 15 minutes with me and I'll walk you through whether this is worth your time. Book a quick call (

-----Job Type & Location

This is a Permanent position based out of Morrisville, NC.

Pay and Benefits

The pay range for this position is $475000.00 - $600000.00/yr.

Individual compensation offered for this position within this range will depend on many factors, including qualifications, skills, relevant experience, job knowledge, geographic location, internal equity, and other pertinent job-related factors.

This is not a typical Director role. Lenovo is effectively looking for a founder mentality leader who can help build the AI brain behind Quantum and Qira. You'll have the resources, funding, and scale of a Fortune 500 company while operating with much of the autonomy and influence typically found in a startup environment. The role offers remote flexibility, executive visibility, significant compensation ($475K-$600K total comp), and the chance to shape AI experiences across millions of Lenovo and Motorola devices worldwide. Lenovobenefits.com

Workplace Type

This is a fully remote position.

Application Deadline

This position is anticipated to close on Oct 22, 2026.

About Actalent

Actalent is a global leader in engineering and sciences services and talent solutions. We help visionary companies advance their engineering and science initiatives through access to specialized experts who drive scale, innovation and speed to market. With a network of almost 20,000 consultants and 5,000 clients across the U.S., Canada, Asia and Europe, Actalent serves many of the Fortune 500. We are proud to be an Engineering News-Record (ENR) Top 500 Design Firm for our engineering design services and a ClearlyRated Best of Staffing® winner for both client and talent service.

The company is an equal opportunity employer and will consider all applications without regard to race, sex, age, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information or any characteristic protected by law.

If you would like to request a reasonable accommodation, such as the modification or adjustment of the job application process or interviewing process due to a disability, please email View email address on click.appcast.io for other accommodation options.

San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance: Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, for all positions located in the city and county of San Francisco, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Massachusetts Lie Detector: It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI): We may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support parts of our hiring process, including sourcing, screening, and evaluating candidates. AI helps assess applications and qualifications, but final decisions are made by our hiring team. By applying, you acknowledge and agree that your application may be reviewed using AI tools.