Senior AI Engineer

Job Title

Senior AI Engineer

Job Description Summary

Build the next generation of scalable, AI-powered software with modern tools, cloud-native systems, and world-class engineering practices.
Cushman & Wakefield is investing heavily in modernizing and transforming its global technology platforms — and we are looking for a Sr AI Engineering Lead who wants to own technical direction end to end. AI is the primary differentiator here, not a side feature: you will define how intelligence is embedded across products built on top of a complex, multi-source enterprise data estate spanning a global commercial real estate firm (properties, leases, work orders, capital projects, and occupier analytics).
If you're motivated by technical breadth, architectural influence, and building elite engineering teams — you'll thrive here.

Job Description

Technology Strategy & Vision

- Define multi-year architectural direction across full-stack systems, cloud platforms, and AI-driven products — focusing on scale, resilience, security, and global performance.

- Establish standards for agentic workflows, intelligent search, conversational interfaces, and data-grounded reasoning across CW's enterprise platforms.

- Shape engineering roadmaps using best-in-class development stacks (e.g., TypeScript/Node.js, Python, Go, C#, React, Next.js, microservices, event-driven architectures).

- Foster a modern engineering culture emphasizing automation, craftsmanship, clean architecture, and continuous improvement.

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Hands-On Full-Stack & Platform Engineering Leadership

Guide the design and development of solutions built with:

- Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, micro-frontends

- Backend: Node.js, Python ( FastAPI ), Go, .NET Core, event-driven microservices

- Cloud & Infra: Azure (preferred), AWS, Kubernetes (AKS/EKS), serverless architectures, Terraform

- Data & AI: Databricks (Genie/AI-BI, Mosaic AI Agent Framework, Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, medallion architecture, model serving), Azure Data Lake, vector databases, LLM orchestration and agentic frameworks

- APIs: GraphQL , gRPC , REST at scale

Drive innovation by embedding AI/ML, automation, production prompt engineering (system prompt architecture, context injection, business-rule encoding, citation and grounding patterns), intelligent workflows, and data interoperability into core products.

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Execution, Quality & Delivery Excellence

Champion excellence through best practices:

- Enterprise-grade CI/CD (Azure DevOps, ArgoCD )

- Automated testing, contract testing, and quality gates

- Observability platforms (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry , Grafana, New Relic, Datadog)

- Secure-by-design principles, threat modeling, zero trust patterns

Oversee engineering delivery across multiple squads — ensuring consistency, velocity, and reliability.

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AI Engineering Standards

Define and enforce AI engineering standards across products and external delivery teams:

- AI evaluation framework design — golden-question sets, hallucination measurement, regression testing, and model quality gates for production AI systems

- Pre-semantic data contracts — schema stability requirements, canonical entity ID definitions, and data quality thresholds that AI systems can depend on

- AI governance — access control patterns for confidential and client data, responsible use guardrails, and auditability requirements for AI-generated outputs

- LLM system design standards — prompt versioning, context window management, grounding and citation patterns, and failure-mode handling

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Architecture, Governance & Platform Integrity

Lead architectural reviews and key design decisions across services, domains, and integrations.

Establish patterns for scalability, fault tolerance, global data compliance, and cost optimization.

Maintain high standards in coding, cloud security, API governance, and data interoperability.

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Stakeholder Alignment & Technical Influence

Partner with Product, Architecture, Operations, and Client Technology to prioritize work, unblock teams, and drive outcomes.

Represent engineering in executive and governance forums with clarity around architectural options, tradeoffs, and investment needs.

Translate complex engineering realities into clear business insights that support strategic decision-making.

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What You Bring — Technical Background

- Bachelor's/ Master's in Computer Science , Engineering, or related field .

- 8+ years of software engineering experience and 3+ years leading technical teams or engineering managers.

- Deep experience with modern full-stack development, cloud-native systems, distributed architectures, and high-scale platforms.

- Demonstrated experience designing and shipping production LLM/AI systems: agentic frameworks, RAG pipelines, text-to-SQL grounding, and AI evaluation harnesses.

- Hands-on expertise with Python, Go, TypeScript/JavaScript, C#, Java, SQL/NoSQL; React, Next.js, Node.js, FastAPI , .NET, Angular Core, microservices, Kubernetes

- Strong command of DevOps, CI/CD automation, infrastructure-as-code, and observability.

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Leadership Competencies

- Strategic engineering thinker who balances innovation with disciplined execution.

- Proven ability to mentor engineers, grow high-performing teams, and attract top talent.

- Ability to influence product, business, and technical leadership.

- Comfortable making architectural decisions that require both technical depth and business awareness.

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Bonus Experience (Highly Attractive)

- Distributed event streaming (Kafka, EventHub), CQRS/event-sourcing patterns.

- Experience building platforms used across global organizations.

- Experience technically overseeing external development vendors or contract engineering teams.

Cushman & Wakefield also provides eligible employees with an opportunity to enroll in a variety of benefit programs, generally including health, vision, and dental insurance, flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, retirement savings plans, life, and disability insurance programs, and paid and unpaid time away from work. In addition to a comprehensive benefits package, Cushman and Wakefield provide eligible employees with competitive pay, which may vary depending on eligibility factors such as geographic location, date of hire, total hours worked, job type, business line, and applicability of collective bargaining agreements.
The compensation that will be offered to the successful candidate will depend on factors such as whether the position is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, the geographic area in which the work will be performed, market pay rates in that area, and the candidate’s experience and qualifications.
The company will not pay less than minimum wage for this role.
The compensation for the position is: $ 124,780.00 - $146,800.00Cushman & Wakefield is an Equal Opportunity employer to all protected groups, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. Discrimination of any type will not be tolerated.

In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA), if you have a disability and would like to request an accommodation in order to apply for a position at Cushman & Wakefield, please call the ADA line at or email . Please refer to the job title and job location when you contact us.

INCO: “Cushman & Wakefield”

Summary

• Location: Costa Mesa, California, USA
• Type: Full time