Lead Software Engineer, AI (P4577)
About The Position
84.51° is a retail data science, insights and media company that helps The Kroger Co., consumer packaged goods companies, agencies, publishers and affiliates create more personalized and valuable experiences for shoppers. Powered by cutting-edge science, they utilize first-party retail data from over 62 million U.S. households to fuel a customer-centric journey. 84.51° follows a 5-day in-office work schedule to support collaboration, alignment, and team connection. We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer to join our AI Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) team. This role will build the engineering backbone that scales AI-assisted development across 84.51° and Kroger. As AI workforce tooling matures and adoption grows, this role will provide the systems and patterns to keep pace, including deployment automation, standardized templates, and a prompt and skill marketplace for discoverability and reusability. This team is tasked with reinventing the software development process for 84.51° and Kroger with AI at the forefront. This position offers the chance to shape how thousands of developers adopt AI within a large enterprise, turning repeatable friction into platform infrastructure by authoring workflows, creating templates, and contributing plugins to internal marketplaces to shorten onramps and increase AI-assisted development velocity. The role spans hands-on automation engineering to cross-team enablement, requiring someone who can build systems and communicate their value to both technical and non-technical audiences. This is a platform-focused, hands-on engineering role where you will provide technical leadership and produce production-quality code, operating across DevOps, Developer Experience, and AI Enablement domains.
Requirements
- 4-year degree in a technology related discipline (Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, etc.) or equivalent work experience
- Minimum 5+ years of experience producing high-quality software on Agile development teams (Python preferred)
- 5+ years of experience with public cloud technologies (Azure preferred)
- 3+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, DevEx, or related roles
- Demonstrated experience building or operating CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation (GitHub Actions or equivalent)
- Familiarity with AI-related concepts such as LLMs, Agents, and Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- Strong experience with AI coding tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or equivalent.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills with demonstrated experience working across technical teams and non-technical business units
- Desire to learn new technology and grow across different areas of technology
Nice To Haves
- Experience building or operating internal developer platforms, marketplaces, or catalog systems
- Experience developing agentic AI applications, prompt libraries, skill registries, or MCP servers
- Experience working with IaC systems, e.g. Terraform/Spacelift, Kubernetes, Helm
- Strong technical writing, documentation, or playbook-authoring skills
- Demonstrated ability to prioritize own workload with multiple responsibilities and adaptability to changes in those priorities
Responsibilities
- Design and build deployment automation for AI workforce tooling — including Agentic Harness configurations, MCP server or similar service-level integrations, and related CI/CD pipelines
- Define and enforce standards for AI tooling configuration, security posture, and observability across teams – often via direct enhancements to the coding harness hook and plugin layers
- Ensure accurate observability of AI tooling adoption and usage patterns using Datadog, Dynatrace, or related tools
- Own and evolve the internal prompt and skill marketplace — enabling teams to publish, discover, version, and reuse prompts, skills, and MCP tools across the enterprise
- Develop workflow playbooks that codify AI-SDLC integration patterns for consistent, repeatable adoption across engineering teams
- Work directly with delivery teams to embed AI tooling into their development workflows, translating friction and capability gaps into scalable platform improvements
- Regularly document and present learnings from platform work and team engagements to the broader AI Enablement organization
- Engage with technology, infrastructure, and product teams as necessary to integrate and extend AI workforce tooling
- Participate routinely in team on-call rotation and customer support during business hours
Benefits
- Medical: with competitive plan designs and support for self-care, wellness and mental health.
- Dental: with in-network and out-of-network benefit.
- Vision: with in-network and out-of-network benefit.
- 401(k) with Roth option and matching contribution.
- Health Savings Account with matching contribution (requires participation in qualifying medical plan).
- AD&D and supplemental insurance options to help ensure additional protection for you.
- Paid time off with flexibility to meet your life needs, including 5 weeks of vacation time, 7 health and wellness days, 3 floating holidays, as well as 6 company-paid holidays per year.
- Paid leave for maternity, paternity and family care instances.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
Associate degree
