Lead AI Engineer

Role: Lead AI Engineer

Location: Parsippany, NJ (Onsite)

Type: Contract

POSITION OVERVIEW: Lead AI Engineer

• This role is crucial in helping to drive research, experimentation, and execution of developer experience (DX) efficiencies and modern workflows. We are seeking a Lead AI engineer to assist with Generative AI solutioning and evaluations of emerging technologies.
• This individual will be working to advance Developer Productivity, helping increase and advance utilization of our tools as well as identify and fill gaps for AI development

POSITION GENERAL DUTIES AND TASKS:

• We are seeking a Lead AI Engineer to drive developer productivity through Copilot first workflows, Generative AI solutioning, and autonomous agent programming. This role is critical to advancing our Developer Experience (DX) strategy by enabling modern, AI augmented development practices across engineering teams.
• You will serve as a hands on technical leader and evangelist for GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and other generative AI products such as Microsoft Power Platform, while researching, evaluating, and operationalizing emerging AI capabilities that measurably improve how software is built and delivered.
• Success is defined by adoption, efficiency gains, and scalable enablement, not experimentation alone.

Key Responsibilities

• GitHub Copilot & Developer Productivity Evangelism
• Drive adoption and advanced usage of GitHub Enterprise and GitHub Copilot, including Copilot Chat and autonomous agent based workflows.
• Identify high impact use cases across the SDLC (coding, testing, refactoring, documentation, CI/CD).
• Establish best practices, patterns, and guardrails for AI assisted development.
• Generative AI & Autonomous Agent Programming
• Design and implement agentic AI solutions that automate and orchestrate developer workflows.
• Build and evaluate autonomous and semi autonomous agents for tasks such as code generation, validation, remediation, and workflow automation.
• Prototype and productionize emerging AI technologies with clear DX value.
• Copilot Studio & Power Platform Enablement
• Build and extend copilots using Microsoft Copilot Studio to support engineering and operational use cases.
• Leverage Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps) to integrate AI capabilities into existing tools and workflows.
• Enable low code / pro code collaboration through reusable components and templates.
• Platform Strategy & Gap Identification
• Assess existing developer tooling and AI capabilities to identify gaps, redundancies, and opportunities.
• Define scalable architectures and reusable frameworks for AI development.
• Partner with security, platform, and architecture teams to ensure compliant and responsible AI usage.
• Technical Leadership
• Act as a subject matter expert for Copilot platforms and Generative AI development tools.
• Mentor engineers and influence teams through guidance, demos, and hands on enablement.
• Contribute to roadmap planning for AI driven DX initiatives.

Required Qualifications

• Strong software engineering background with hands on experience (Python, Java, C#, or similar).
• Practical experience building Generative AI solutions in production environments.
• Experience with GitHub Copilot and AI assisted development workflows.
• Familiarity with LLMs, prompt engineering, embeddings, and RAG patterns.
• Proven ability to evaluate and operationalize emerging technologies.
• Preferred Qualifications
• Experience with autonomous or agentic AI programming.
• Hands on experience with Microsoft Copilot Studio and Power Platform.
• Background in Developer Experience (DX), platform engineering, or productivity tooling.
• Experience working in large scale or regulated enterprise environments.
• What Success Looks Like
• Measurable improvements in developer velocity and workflow efficiency.
• Broad adoption of Copilot based development practices.
• Reduced friction across the software development lifecycle.
• Scalable, reusable AI patterns adopted across teams.

Why This Role Matters

• You will shape how AI transforms software development at scale.
• You’ll influence modern, Copilot first engineering workflows.
• Your work will directly enable engineers to focus on higher value problem solving.
• You’ll help define the future of AI driven developer productivity.
• This role researches, evaluates, and supports the adoption of emerging technologies, including identifying effective AI use cases to drive
• efficiency.
• It applies core software engineering principles to design, develop, test, integrate, and maintain applications that deliver business
• value.
• The role manages the full system development lifecycle, ensuring solutions are delivered on time, within budget, and successfully
• implemented.
• It provides deep functional and subject matter expertise, interpreting business challenges and recommending best practices to
• solve complex problems.
• While primarily an individual contributor, the role may act as a player coach, leading projects or teams and operating
• independently with guidance only in the most complex situations.
• Agile Engineering Best Practices
• Identifies and recommends improvements to the software development lifecycle and best practices in agile engineering.
• Provides input into various software development strategies (e.g., unit testing, acceptance testing, continuous delivery and integration,
• release and deployment for frequent and reliable release), providing the case for using agile vs. traditional methodologies.
• Develops the roadmap and guidelines for tailoring agile practices to a complex and dynamic software development project.

Project Management

• Prioritizes multiple project plans, making final decisions about priorities, timing and resources.
• Keeps abreast of the progress of multiple projects within a program or across the department; coaches project managers to adjust priorities or timelines as needed.
• Monitors resource usage across projects or programs, identifying areas or synergy or redundancy and looking for ways to optimize efficiency.
• Troubleshooting
• Provides guidance and expertise to analyze data and patterns and assess the root cause of complex, non-routine problems.
• Collaborates with others across disciplines to brainstorm and execute solutions to the most complex, uncommon problems.
• Guides the execution of solutions for complex, non-routine issues; redirects solution implementation if desired results were not originally met.
• Application Development/Programming
• Identifies areas for improvement and develops innovative enhancements using available software development tools following design requirements of customer.
• System and Technology Integration
• Interprets internal/external business challenges and recommends integration of the appropriate systems, applications and technology to provide a fully functional solution to a business problem.
• Exceeds customers’ expectations by listening for unexpressed needs; connects customer needs to relevant service offerings and new technology.
• Leads others in resolving technical issues in a timely manner; follows up with customers to ensure satisfaction.
• Partners with the business to integrate new technologies into business solutions; creates and communicates a vision of the technology requirements for the future state of the business