AI System Lead Engineer

Lenovo•Chicago, IL

6d•$168,100 - $257,715•Onsite

About The Position

Lenovo is seeking two System Leads to shape the next generation of Qira, a cross-device Personal AI Intelligence that works seamlessly across Lenovo and Motorola devices. Qira creates intelligent, personalized experiences spanning hardware, software, and services, and is a key part of Lenovo's vision for AI that is contextual, proactive, and deeply integrated into everyday user experiences. The two roles are System Lead, Ambient Intelligence, focusing on ambient, always-on intelligence systems that understand user context, and System Lead, Device & Application Intelligence, focusing on AI-powered systems that understand and automate device and application usage patterns. Both roles offer a unique opportunity to influence the core intelligence behind Lenovo's Personal AI vision and define how millions of users interact with AI across their digital ecosystem. The positions are located onsite in Chicago, IL or San Jose, CA.

Requirements

8+ years professional software engineering experience
2+ years leading multi-engineer delivery
Experience in cross-platform systems with a shared core and per-OS hosts
Deep systems experience in at least two of: Rust, Kotlin/Android, Windows native, C/C++ systems
Experience shipping background / always-on workloads (battery, lifecycle, scheduling, resource budgets)
Experience in privacy-by-design: consent, least privilege, retention/deletion, fail-closed policy paths
Experience owning API/ABI boundaries between native code and application hosts
Experience delivering under launch pressure with multiple dependent teams

Nice To Haves

Multimodal sensing adjacency (screen, audio, sensors, OCR/STT, or similar signal pipelines)
On-device or edge ML integration experience (inference consumers, not necessarily model training)
Observability discipline: structured telemetry without leaking sensitive content
Remote configuration / kill-switch patterns for production safety
Consumer device, PC OEM, or mobile platform shipping experience
Excellent written communication for decisions, risks, and operating cadence
Familiarity with secure coding reviews and threat-aware design

Responsibilities

Set roadmap, milestones, and technical standards for the Ambient System team.
Lead and mentor engineers across shared core and platform host work.
Drive architecture decisions at trust boundaries (native ↔ shared core ↔ UI).
Keep delivery predictable: clear ownership, healthy planning hygiene, early escalation.
Partner with product, design, security/privacy, and adjacent teams on interfaces and SLAs that support other AI capabilities and experiences.
Represent the team in architecture, security, and launch reviews.