Lead AI Engineer

Title: Lead AI Engineer
Location: Cincinnati, OH (Hybrid -Onsite)
12+ Month Contract

Job details

We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join our AI Gateway team and help shape the future of AI infrastructure. The AI Gateway team develops and maintains an enterprise-scale AI Gateway that provides centralized, secure and scalable access to Large Language Models (LLMs). The AI Gateway is core to AI strategy and is a high impact product and team. This is a mission-critical and fast-growing product that handles millions of requests and billions of tokens per week – and is growing exponentially. The team also builds and maintains a Portal that is used to onboard and manage Users/Teams leveraging the AI Gateway. You will play an active role in shaping the strategy of how the client and its subsidiaries leverage AI to do our jobs better and make customers lives easier.

You will collaborate with cross-functional teams of Data Scientists, Research Scientists, Software Engineers, and Product Leads to understand business requirements and ensure we build a scalable, robust and highly available AI Gateway and Portal for users. This team will also engage with third party vendors to enable speed, scale, and efficiency.

This is a generalist Software Engineer role spanning Cloud Infrastructure, DevOps and Platform Engineering. This role is hands-on and is expected to both provide technical leadership and to produce code. This role will be responsible for helping lead the development and coordination of technical projects. The day to day for this role could vary from writing APIs in Python, deploying cloud infrastructure using Terraform, deploying new code or performance optimizations with Kubernetes & Helm, and other related projects.

RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Lead development of back-end services, primarily in Python
• Work regularly with AI model APIs (such as the Azure OpenAI API or Google VertexAI API)
• Work daily with Azure and Google Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform)
• Project-level development of infrastructure using Terraform  
• Project-level development of CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions  
• Troubleshooting of issues related to deployments in Kubernetes (Azure Kubernetes Service) 
• Ensure accurate observability of solutions deployed in AKS using Datadog, Dynatrace or other related observability tools 
• Ensure we hit SLAs and lead incident management procedures 
• Document work and solutions appropriately  
• Engage with other technology, infrastructure, and product teams as necessary to complete tasks
• Participate routinely in team on-call rotation and customer support during business hours 

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND EXPERIENCE 

• 4-year degree in a technology related discipline (Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, etc.) or equivalent work experience 
• 5+ years of experience with public cloud technologies (Azure or Google Cloud Platform preferred), including demonstrated application development and hosting focus.
• 5+ years of experience with container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm) 
• 3+ years of experience with cloud infrastructure automation tools (Terraform) 
• 3+ years of experience with SDLC and working with Agile development teams
• Ability to manage large size technical projects, solving related problems and working to tight deadlines while under pressure 
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills with demonstrated experience leveraging these skills with technical teams and non-technical business units 
• Desire to learn new technology and grow across different areas of technology
• Familiarity with AI-related concepts such as LLMs, Agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP)

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS, AND EXPERIENCE

• Experience developing AI-powered features or applications
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize own workload with multiple responsibilities and adaptability to changes in those priorities
• Experience building Proxies and Gateway services (e.g.: API Gateways)