Lead AI Engineer
About The Position
About the Role & TeamIDC is building the next generation of AI-powered intelligence platforms that transform how technology decisions get made. Our platform re-imagines the way decision-makers discover and interact with trusted research and data, and is foundational to IDC's future. We are looking for a Senior AI/Agent Engineer to serve as the player-coach dev lead for the new Memory / Living Intel Pod. This pod's mission is making the platform remember users and proactively alert them when things change. It starts with memory: persistent, cross-session understanding of each user. It grows into proactive intelligence: monitoring saved artifacts for changes, summarizing what matters, and routing alerts to the right channel. The pod may eventually split into two teams as these capabilities mature. You will be the first hire and will set the technical direction for a cross-functional team spanning AI/LLM engineering and backend infrastructure. This is a leadership role where you code more than 50% of the time.
Requirements
- 7+ years of professional Python development experience
- Proven experience building LLM-powered systems in production environments
- Player-coach track record leading teams of 4-8 engineers while remaining a significant code contributor
- Experience leading across disciplines, bridging AI/LLM engineering and infrastructure engineering
- Strong background in asynchronous system design: background jobs, event-driven patterns, scheduled processing
- Quality-minded approach to system design and code
- Comfort with ambiguity and building from scratch
Nice To Haves
- Experience building systems that maintain or evolve user context and state over time
- Familiarity with semantic search, embeddings, and vector databases (e.g., Snowflake Cortex, Pinecone, Weaviate)
- Background in event-driven architectures, job scheduling, and change detection patterns
- Experience with LLM observability tools (e.g., Langfuse, LangSmith, Weights & Biases)
- Track record of standing up new teams from zero
Responsibilities
- Lead a cross-functional pod of 4-8 engineers spanning AI/LLM and backend infrastructure disciplines
- Set the technical direction for the pod's memory and proactive intelligence systems
- Build memory capabilities that give the platform persistent, cross-session understanding of each user
- Design proactive intelligence systems that monitor artifacts for changes, summarize what matters, and route alerts to the right channel
- Integrate with the AI agent pipeline and channel adapters built by adjacent teams
- Define interfaces and contracts with adjacent teams
- Write production code. This role is coding more than 50% of the time
Benefits
- 15 vacation days per year (increases with tenure; carryover allowed)
- 10 paid sick days per year
- 1 week paid new parenting leave
- Flexible work options (remote, part-time, flexible hours)
- Health, dental, vision, and paramedical coverage for you and your family
- $1,600 annual healthcare spending account
- Employee Assistance Program for counseling and support
- Best Doctors medical second opinions
- Life, AD&D, and long-term disability insurance
- Retirement savings plan with company match (up to 4% of salary)
- $75/month technology allowance for home office or phone expenses
- Company-paid cell phone plan
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
Education Level
No Education Listed
Number of Employees
101-250 employees
