AI Transformation Lead

Our client seeking an AI Software Engineer Team Lead to join a growing technology team focused on developing secure, production-ready AI applications and backend workflows. This is a hands‑on software engineering role focused on using Python, cloud technologies, and modern AI services to automate complex business processes. The ideal candidate is a strong software engineer who can design systems around non-deterministic AI models, make sound architectural decisions, and provide technical leadership to a developing engineering team. Experience building AI applications is important, but machine learning model development and predictive modeling are not the primary focus. Key Responsibilities Design, develop, and deploy backend applications and AI-powered workflows using Python and cloud technologies. Build systems that integrate LLMs, APIs, databases, documents, and enterprise data sources to automate complex business processes. Develop AI applications using technologies such as RAG, vector databases, embeddings, agents, and AI orchestration frameworks. Design scalable and reliable software architectures, including asynchronous and distributed workflows. Develop solutions for use cases such as document analysis, information extraction, knowledge retrieval, and AI-assisted business processes. Establish appropriate testing, QA, evaluation, and validation strategies for AI applications and non-deterministic systems. Implement production observability, logging, tracing, monitoring, error handling, and performance controls. Design appropriate authentication, authorization, data-access, and security requirements in partnership with infrastructure and security teams. Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior software engineers and contribute to code and architecture reviews. Translate business requirements into practical technical solutions and communicate architecture and technical decisions to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Participate in Agile/Scrum development, sprint planning, CI/CD, and continuous improvement initiatives. Evaluate AI-generated code and solutions critically, ensuring production-quality software through sound engineering practices. Collaborate with infrastructure, security, process analysts, and business stakeholders to deliver reliable enterprise applications. Required Qualifications Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, Mathematics, or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience. 3-7+ years of professional software engineering experience, preferably with backend or application development. Strong professional experience with Python. Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals, object-oriented programming, APIs, databases, data structures, and system design. Experience designing and developing production applications in a cloud environment. Strong SQL and relational database knowledge, including database schema design. Experience working with AI/LLM applications and understanding how to architect software around non-deterministic models. Understanding of RAG, embeddings, vector search/vector databases, and AI application workflows. Experience with software testing, debugging, monitoring, and production troubleshooting. Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers or provide technical leadership. Preferred Qualifications Experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Experience with Vertex AI and Gemini or comparable LLM platforms. Experience with MCP, AI agents, or AI orchestration frameworks. Experience with asynchronous processing, distributed systems, queues, event-driven architecture, or workflow orchestration. Experience in financial services, banking, healthcare, or another highly regulated industry. Experience with CI/CD, DevOps, and infrastructure-as-code. Experience implementing AI evaluation, observability, and model/application monitoring. Knowledge of vector databases and semantic search. Spanish/English bilingual proficiency is a plus. What We're Looking For The ideal candidate is a hands‑on senior software engineer who is ready to step into a technical leadership role. You should be comfortable taking an ambiguous business problem, designing the architecture, building the solution, testing it, and supporting it in production. You should also be able to explain why you made your technical decisions, identify weaknesses in AI-generated code, and push back when a proposed solution does not meet production, security, or reliability requirements. This is not a traditional data science or machine learning modeling position. The focus is on software engineering, backend AI application development, system architecture, and technical leadership. #J-18808-Ljbffr