Lead Engineer — AI Developer Platform

Raymond James • Saint Petersburg, FL

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

Raymond James is seeking a hands-on Lead Engineer to set the technical vision for its internal AI Developer Platform and improve its scalability, reliability, ease of adoption, and flexibility as AI technologies evolve. The role leads platform architecture, establishes engineering standards, and delivers technical solutions while remaining directly involved in coding, design and pull-request reviews, production support, complex problem-solving, and long-term platform strategy. The platform is already used by multiple engineering teams and is expanding across the firm.

The Lead Engineer will guide platform architecture and cross-platform compatibility, deliver capabilities for installation and onboarding, telemetry and reporting, secure development environments, AI agents, integrations, and business-domain knowledge resources. The role also evaluates emerging AI models and developer technologies, works with product leadership on roadmap priorities, supports operational excellence and incident response, and influences engineering teams through design facilitation, mentorship, and collaboration. Regular engagement with platform users and stakeholders is expected to identify pain points and improve developer experience.

The position is hybrid, with three in-office days per week, including a Monday or Friday, at the St. Petersburg, Florida Corporate Office. It is not eligible for work visa sponsorship now or in the future. Travel is less than 25%. The total compensation may include base pay and additional compensation such as cash or equity, discretionary bonuses, or commissions. Benefits may include medical, dental, and vision coverage; insurance; disability benefits; retirement savings; paid time off; and parental leave. Eligibility and offerings may vary by position and employment status.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of senior engineering experience building enterprise-grade software relied on by engineers or business teams, such as internal platforms, large-scale services, developer tooling, or SDKs.
• At least 2 years of hands-on experience building solutions powered by large language models or AI agent frameworks.
• Experience building or extending agentic coding tools such as Claude Code or OpenAI Codex, and IDEs such as VS Code, or comparable tools.
• Strong proficiency in Python and working knowledge of Node.js and TypeScript.
• Direct experience designing or substantially extending integrations between AI coding tools and external systems, such as Model Context Protocol servers, custom LangChain/LangGraph tools, Copilot extensions, JetBrains AI plugins, or Cursor, Continue, or Aider integrations.
• A working point of view on at least one production AI coding tool, including prompt design, tool-use loops, context-window economics, and common failure modes.
• Experience with more than one LLM provider and a clear position on provider-agnostic abstractions.
• Cross-platform engineering experience across Windows, macOS, and Linux, including installers, path handling, shells, and credential storage.
• Background in one or more application technology stacks listed in the posting: Python, Java/Spring, Angular, React, .NET, Oracle, Redshift, or SQL Server, sufficient to review stack-specific contributions credibly.
• Track record of shipping infrastructure that other engineers depend on daily and being accountable when it fails.
• Comfort working in regulated financial services, including discipline around secrets, data classification, change management, and auditability.
• Practical experience with LLM security and data-protection concerns, including prompt-injection mitigation, preventing secret leakage through prompts and tool outputs, PII redaction, and trust boundaries around model output.
• Deep hands-on knowledge of the software development lifecycle and modern engineering methodologies, including agile, trunk-based development, code review, CI/CD, and observability-driven operations.
• Experience in a mature CI/CD and observability environment, such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins, SonarQube, and a logging or APM platform such as Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace.
• Demonstrated technical leadership without direct authority, including architecture decision records that drove consensus, presenting technical direction to senior engineering and business leadership, and mentoring senior engineers.
• Prior work on agent evaluation, such as golden task sets, regression suites, judge models, or other methods to measure improvement in AI workflows.
• Education listed as completed Bachelor’s in Computer and Information Science; completed high school also listed as required.
• Licenses and certifications: none required.

Nice To Haves

• Active engagement with the developer-tools, AI agents, or AI/ML open-source community through substantive contributions, conference talks, or published writing demonstrating depth and a public point of view.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve platform architecture for scalability, extensibility, and maintainability.
• Design solutions compatible with multiple AI providers, coding tools, and operating systems.
• Establish engineering patterns and best practices for the broader team.
• Lead and contribute directly to platform initiatives, including streamlining installation and onboarding across Windows and macOS.
• Build telemetry and reporting capabilities that provide visibility into AI usage, costs, and adoption.
• Develop secure, sandboxed environments for AI-assisted development and testing.
• Expand AI agent capabilities, enterprise integrations, and business-domain knowledge resources.
• Assess emerging AI models, developer tools, and orchestration technologies; recommend and implement capabilities while avoiding unnecessary vendor dependency.
• Partner with product leadership to evaluate capabilities and define roadmap priorities.
• Maintain high standards for code quality, testing, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Lead code and architectural reviews for core platform components.
• Support incident response and continuous platform improvements.
• Provide technical leadership across a distributed contributor model, facilitate design reviews, solve complex technical challenges, and mentor engineers.
• Foster collaboration across engineering teams contributing to the platform.
• Engage with platform users, gather feedback, identify pain points, and translate insights into platform enhancements.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to prioritize investments and improve developer experience.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage may be available.
• Life insurance may be available.
• Critical illness insurance and accident insurance may be available.
• Disability benefits may be available.
• Retirement savings may be available.
• Paid time off, including vacation, holidays, and sick leave, may be available.
• Parental leave may be available.
• Compensation may include additional cash or equity, discretionary bonuses, or commissions.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior