Lead AI Engineer

Lead AI Engineer

KeyBank is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to design, build, and modernize AI-powered conversational experiences, IVR platforms, and Voice Bot solutions within the Contact Center Technology organization. This role serves as a senior hands-on engineer responsible for architecting, developing, and delivering AI-driven solutions that enhance customer self-service and agent experiences.

Unlike a traditional technical lead role, this position is deeply focused on hands-on AI engineering and solution delivery. The Lead AI Engineer will spend the majority of their time designing, building, coding, integrating, and optimizing AI-powered applications while providing technical guidance across initiatives.

The Lead AI Engineer partners closely with product, platform, voice, and operations teams to deliver secure, scalable, and highly reliable conversational AI solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This is a senior individual contributor role with delivery accountability, but no people management responsibility.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop AI-powered IVR and voice bot solutions leveraging modern conversational AI frameworks.
• Lead the technical architecture, engineering design, and implementation of AI-driven customer experience initiatives.
• Build and develop Node.js / TypeScript microservices aligned to cloud-native and low-latency voice requirements.
• Own end-to-end delivery of complex AI features, from concept and design through deployment and production support.
• Apply agentic AI patterns utilizing Gemini, LangGraph, LangChain, and emerging AI frameworks to enhance conversational experiences.
• Develop, test, evaluate, and optimize prompts, workflows, and AI orchestration strategies.
• Collaborate across the contact center technology ecosystem to support call routing, self-service, and agent handoff scenarios.
• Provide technical mentorship and code review support while contributing directly to development efforts.
• Establish engineering best practices for AI solution development, testing, deployment, and observability.
• Apply SRE principles to ensure resiliency, scalability, monitoring, and production readiness.
• Ensure solutions comply with security and regulatory requirements (PII / PCI).

Required Skills & Qualifications

• 4+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years as a Lead AI Engineer, Lead Engineer, Principal Engineer, or comparable senior technical contributor role.
• Strong hands-on experience building and deploying AI-powered applications and services.
• Strong, hands-on experience with Node.js / TypeScript.
• Proven experience designing and delivering cloud-native solutions on GCP.
• Experience implementing and integrating LLMs, conversational AI platforms, and agentic AI frameworks.
• Solid understanding of microservices architecture, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Hands-on Kubernetes experience, including GKE cluster setup and platform operations.
• Experience with IVR, voice bots, conversational AI, or contact center technologies.
• Strong collaboration skills across engineering, product, and operations teams.
• Excellent technical judgment, communication, and problem-solving skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with conversational AI and agentic frameworks (Gemini, LangGraph, LangChain).
• Experience developing AI agents, orchestration workflows, and multi-agent solutions.
• Knowledge of voice flows, call routing, containment, and agent escalation.
• Experience working in regulated or financial services environments.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, containerization, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Experience working in Agile delivery models at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrated experience with Agentic "Vibe Coding" — rapid prototyping and iterative development using AI-assisted coding tools, prompts, and agent-driven workflows.

This position is NOT eligible for employment visa sponsorship for non-U.S. citizens.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

This position is eligible to earn a base salary in the range of $96,000.00 - $181,000.00 annually. Placement within the pay range may differ based upon various factors, including but not limited to skills, experience and geographic location. Compensation for this role also includes eligibility for incentive compensation which may include production, commission, and/or discretionary incentives.

Please click here for a list of benefits for which this position is eligible.

Key has implemented an approach to employee workspaces which prioritizes in-office presence, while providing flexible options in circumstances where roles can be performed effectively in a mobile environment.

KeyCorp is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to sustaining an inclusive culture. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, genetic information, pregnancy, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

Qualified individuals with disabilities or disabled veterans who are unable or limited in their ability to apply on this site may request reasonable accommodations by emailing View email address on click.appcast.io.

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