Lead AI Engineer | Onsite - Delaware

Photon•United States,

1d•$56,000 - $196,000•Onsite

About The Position

We are seeking a Lead AI Engineer to own the delivery of LLM API integration and SDK patterns across applications. This role involves setting organizational guidance on LLM usage, defining standards for prompt engineering and context window management, and driving the delivery of RAG systems, AI agents, and multi-agent systems. A critical aspect of this role is owning the delivery of guardrails for safety, compliance, and PII handling, especially within a financial-services context. You will also define evaluation frameworks, manage latency, observability, and cost tracking for LLM-backed systems, and lead the day-to-day delivery of an offshore development team, including sprint commitments, code reviews, and unblocking team members. Reporting delivery status, risks, and blockers to engineering leadership is also a key responsibility.

Requirements

6+ years in software engineering, with 2+ years as a tech lead owning end-to-end delivery of LLM/AI-powered systems.
Proven track record of shipping AI-powered features on committed timelines, including hands-on troubleshooting under delivery pressure.
Strong, hands-on Python skills at an architectural/systems level.
Proven experience architecting LLM API integrations and SDK-level abstractions across multiple providers.
Demonstrated judgment on model selection (cost, latency, capability trade-offs) across use cases.
Deep expertise in prompt engineering and context window management at scale.
Proven design experience with RAG systems, including vector database architecture and knowledgebase design.
Experience architecting AI agents/multi-agent systems and tool-use patterns (MCP or equivalent).
Strong understanding of guardrails design — content safety, PII protection, compliance controls for AI outputs.
Experience defining evaluation frameworks and integrating AI testing into CI/CD.
Proven ability to design for latency, observability, and cost management of AI systems in production.
Strong stakeholder communication; able to directly manage day-to-day delivery of an offshore team (standups, unblocking, sprint accountability).

Nice To Haves

Direct experience with specific frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent).
Experience with AWS Bedrock or comparable managed LLM platforms.
Contributions to or deep familiarity with MCP (Model Context Protocol) implementations.
Experience building internal LLM gateways.
Familiarity with responsible-AI/model-risk-management frameworks used in financial services.

Responsibilities

Own delivery of LLM API integration and SDK patterns used across applications.
Set organizational guidance on which LLM to use for what use case and drive delivery of multi-LLM scenarios.
Define standards for advanced prompt engineering and context window management.
Own delivery of RAG systems, including vector database selection/topology and knowledgebase design.
Drive delivery of AI agent and multi-agent systems and tool-use/MCP integration patterns.
Own guardrails delivery (safety, compliance, PII handling in prompts/outputs).
Define evaluation frameworks and real-time eval strategy; set standards for AI testing in CI/CD.
Own latency profiling, AI observability, and cost tracking/management for LLM-backed systems.
Run day-to-day delivery of the offshore development team: sprint commitments, code/design review, real-time unblocking, and hands-on work on critical-path AI features.
Report delivery status, risks, and blockers to engineering leadership.