Director, AI Engineering

Artefact•Montreal, QC

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Artefact is a next-generation consulting firm, specializing in data, analytics & AI consulting, dedicated to transforming data into business impact across the entire value chain of organizations. We help our clients grow their data and digital capabilities, and we’re also growing in parallel. We have 2000 employees across 36 offices who are focused on accelerating digital transformation. Our state-of-the-art data technologies, lean AI agile methodologies, and cohesive teams of the finest business consultants, data analysts, data scientists, data engineers, and digital experts are all dedicated to bringing extra value to every client. We design data-based solutions to meet our clients' specific needs, always conceived with a business-centric approach and delivered with tangible results. Our data-driven services are built upon the deep AI expertise we've acquired with our 1000+ client base around the globe.

Requirements

Substantial Data Science and machine learning background with 8+ years of experience, including at least 2–3 years working on LLM architecture, agentic design, and harness & context engineering.
Expertise in generative AI/LLM engineering (context engineering, agent harnesses, RAG, and fine-tuning) and in classical machine learning modeling, with proven production deployments.
Master’s degree (or higher) in computer science, engineering, statistics/mathematics, or a related field.
Hands-on command of core machine learning libraries (scikit-learn, XGBoost, etc.), agentic SDKs (LangGraph/LangChain, Google ADK, Claude Agent SDK), and fine-tuning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
Experience building fine-tuning pipelines end to end: training data curation, supervised fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment.
Solid grasp of AI system design: ML model lifecycle (MLOps), agents, tool use, evaluation harnesses, guardrails, and observability.
Deep experience with Google Gemini Enterprise / Vertex AI; basic working knowledge of Microsoft AI Foundry and AWS Bedrock.
Experience leading and growing engineering teams, and supporting pre-sales: proposals, demos, and solution scoping with clients.
Excellent communication skills and comfort collaborating across teams and with stakeholders.
Strong business acumen with an interest in business-facing work.
Adaptability and a start-up mentality to thrive in a dynamic environment.

Nice To Haves

Google Gemini Enterprise ecosystem (Vertex AI, Agent Builder) as the primary stack; basic knowledge of Microsoft AI Foundry and AWS Bedrock

Responsibilities

Lead a team of AI & machine learning engineers and managers, driving the design and delivery of production-grade AI solutions — from classical machine learning models to LLM-powered applications — and the pipelines that power them.
Bring senior technical judgment to architecture and model decisions.
Partner closely with clients and business stakeholders — including hands-on pre-sales work shaping proposals and solution designs.
Define how context engineering, agent harnesses, and fine-tuning practices get embedded into every solution.
Report into senior AI/technology leadership on strategy and priorities.
Lead the design, build, and optimization of production AI systems — classical machine learning models, LLM applications, and agentic systems — ensuring scalability, reliability, and cost-efficient inference.
Define and standardize context engineering practices — prompt and system design, RAG architectures, vector stores, memory management, and tool/function calling — so models receive the right information at the right time.
Direct the build of robust agent harnesses — orchestration layers, evaluation frameworks, guardrails, and observability — that make LLM systems reliable, safe, and measurable in production.
Lead the design and operation of fine-tuning and model adaptation pipelines — training data curation, supervised fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment — to specialize models for client use cases.
Architect and deploy solutions on Google Gemini Enterprise and Vertex AI as the primary stack, applying working knowledge of Microsoft AI Foundry and AWS Bedrock where client contexts require.
Manage, mentor, and develop a team of AI & ML engineers; setting technical standards and fostering best practices and knowledge sharing.
Support pre-sales activities — scoping engagements, building demos and proofs of concept, and presenting solution architectures to prospective clients alongside account teams.
Oversee the development of classical and modern ML models — predictive modeling, forecasting, recommendation, and deep learning — choosing the right technique for each business problem, LLM or not.
Partner with senior leadership to shape GenAI architecture direction, tooling decisions, and platform roadmap within your area.