Director Of Ai Engineering

Director of AI Engineering

Location: Charlotte NC / Hybrid / Remote]

Department: Engineering

Reports to: VP of Engineering / CTO

Employment Type: Full-Time

No C2C, No third parties

About the Role

We are looking for a Director of AI Engineering to lead the design, development, and deployment of our artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. This role sits at the intersection of technical leadership and strategic vision — you'll build and grow a high-performing team of AI/ML engineers, set technical direction for AI initiatives, and partner closely with Product, Data Science, and executive leadership to turn AI capabilities into real business impact.

What You'll Do

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of AI/ML engineers, ML Ops engineers, and applied scientists, including hiring, performance management, and career development.
• Define and drive the technical roadmap for AI/ML systems, aligning engineering priorities with company strategy and product goals.
• Oversee the full lifecycle of AI systems: research and prototyping, model training and evaluation, productionization, deployment, monitoring, and iteration.
• Architect scalable, reliable infrastructure for training and serving machine learning models (including LLMs and generative AI where applicable).
• Establish engineering best practices for MLOps, including CI/CD for models, experiment tracking, versioning, testing, and observability.
• Partner with Product Management to identify high-value AI use cases and translate business requirements into technical solutions.
• Collaborate with Data Engineering and Data Science teams to ensure high-quality data pipelines and feature availability.
• Own AI system performance, cost, latency, and reliability targets;
  drive continuous improvement.
• Evaluate and integrate third-party AI/ML tools, platforms, and APIs (e.G., cloud ML platforms, foundation model providers) as appropriate.
• Ensure responsible AI practices, including model governance, bias mitigation, security, and compliance with relevant regulations.
• Communicate technical strategy, progress, and risks to executive leadership and non-technical stakeholders.
• Stay current with emerging AI/ML research, tools, and industry trends, and assess their applicability to the business.

What We're Looking For

Required:

• 8+ years of experience in software or ML engineering, with 3+ years in a technical leadership or management role.
• Proven track record of leading teams that have shipped machine learning or AI systems into production at scale.
• Strong hands-on background in machine learning, deep learning, or applied AI (prior IC experience as an ML/AI engineer preferred).
• Experience with modern ML frameworks (e.G., PyTorch, TensorFlow) and MLOps tooling (e.G., MLflow, Kubeflow, SageMaker, Vertex AI).
• Solid understanding of software engineering fundamentals: distributed systems, APIs, cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes).
• Experience managing budgets, headcount planning, and cross-functional roadmaps.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).

Preferred:

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• Experience building or deploying products using large language models (LLMs) or generative AI.
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), fine-tuning, or prompt engineering at scale.
• Background in a regulated industry (finance, healthcare, etc.) with knowledge of AI governance and compliance frameworks.
• Prior experience scaling an AI/ML engineering org from a small team to a larger organization.

What We Offer

• Competitive salary
• Company paid health, dental and vision insurance
• 401(k) with company match
• Paid time off and holidays