Lead AI Engineer

DescriptionKforce has a client in Charlotte, NC that is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to lead IVR and Conversational AI initiatives, designing scalable LLM and NLP solutions for high-volume customer interactions. This role will drive architecture, best practices, and innovation across voice AI systems.Key Responsibilities:* Architect and develop AI-driven IVR and conversational systems using Python* Build NLP models for text classification and clustering to support intent detection and call routing* Perform data analysis using SQL on large-scale IVR and interaction datasets* Design and deploy LLM workflows (prompt engineering, RAG, evaluation) for voice and chat use cases* Lead development of agentic AI workflows for multi-step customer interactions* Establish LLMOps best practices, including monitoring, evaluation, and lifecycle management* Partner with IVR platform, speech engineering, and product teams* Mentor offshore and junior AI engineersRequirements* 12+ years of experience in AI / ML* Very strong proficiency in Python* Proven expertise in NLP, including: Text classification; Clustering* Strong experience in data analysis using SQL* Hands-on experience with LLMs: Prompt engineering; Evaluation frameworks; Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)Nice to have:* Experience with Agentic AI and multi-agent orchestration* Experience with LLMOps/MLOps in production environments* Familiarity with IVR platforms and speech technologies (ASR, NLU, TTS)* AWS/GCPLibraries & Tools:* Python/ML: NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, XGBoost* NLP: spaCy, Hugging Face Transformers, NLTK, Sentence-Transformers* LLM Frameworks: LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI SDK* Agentic AI (Good to Have): LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI* Data & SQL: Oracle, MySQL, SQLAlchemy* Vector Databases: FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant* LLMOps/MLOps (Good to Have): MLflow, Weights & Biases, BentoML, AirflowJob TypeContractCompensation66 - $70