Sr. AI Engineering Lead

Gallagher • Rolling Meadows, IL

7d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior AI Engineering Lead owns the technical delivery of enterprise AI solutions at AJ Gallagher. Reporting to the Director of AI, you will lead the design, build, and deployment of production AI systems - RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and Copilot integrations - on our Azure and .NET/Python stack. You will set engineering standards for a growing AI team, mentor developers, and partner directly with business units to turn ambiguous problems into shipped, governed, production-grade AI products in a regulated insurance environment.

Requirements

• 7 or more years in software engineering, including experience in building LLM/GenAI systems in production and 2+ years leading engineers or owning technical direction.
• Hands-on production experience with Microsoft Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, and Azure compute (Functions, Container Apps, or App Service).
• Strong .NET/C# plus working proficiency in Python; able to review and contribute in both.
• Proven delivery of RAG architectures, agent orchestration (Microsoft Agent Framework, Semantic Kernel, or LangChain), and prompt/evaluation pipelines.
• Designing secure REST APIs and event-driven integrations (Azure API Management, Service Bus) within an enterprise identity model (Entra ID, RBAC).
• Agile experience with Azure DevOps (or equivalent) - backlogs, CI/CD, automated testing, and release management.
• Track record of mentoring engineers, running design reviews, and owning technical decisions across multiple concurrent initiatives.

Nice To Haves

• Prior AI/ML delivery in insurance, financial services, or healthcare, with familiarity with model risk management or responsible AI guidance.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled and spec-driven development: Using AI-assisted tooling and agent workflows across the SDLC to quickly deliver production-grade systems.
• Building applications tightly aligned to Terraform-deployed, optimized infrastructure.
• Built LLMOps tooling - automated evals, red-teaming, drift/cost monitoring - at enterprise scale.
• Azure certifications (AZ-305, AI-103) or equivalent demonstrated architecture ownership.

Responsibilities

• Translate Business Problems into Technical Solutions: Work side-by-side with business leaders and subject-matter experts to unpack ambiguous, unstructured challenges and shape them into well-scoped, buildable AI solutions with a clear delivery path.
• Own AI Solution Architecture: Design and defend end-to-end architectures for GenAI and agentic systems on Microsoft Foundry - spanning Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, Foundry Tools, and Copilot Studio - that meet enterprise security, scalability, and data-residency requirements.
• Lead Hands-On Delivery: Write and review production code (C#/.NET and Python) for RAG pipelines, AI agent orchestration, and API integrations; remain a strong individual contributor while leading the team.
• Set Engineering Standards: Establish patterns for agentic development, evaluation, testing, CI/CD (Azure DevOps), and observability so AI solutions are repeatable and maintainable - not one-off prototypes.
• Mentor and Grow Engineers: Coach AI developers through design reviews, pairing, and career development; raise the technical bar across the team.
• Ship to Enterprise Surfaces: Deliver AI capabilities into internal applications, Microsoft Teams, and M365 Copilot, integrating through Foundry agents, Service Bus, Azure Functions, and other cloud-native services.
• Build Governance In: Implement responsible-AI controls - Entra ID/RBAC, IaC Policy, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, audit logging - aligned to Gallagher compliance expectations from day one, not as an afterthought.
• Drive Evaluation and Reliability: Define measurable quality bars (groundedness, accuracy, latency, cost) and build the evaluation harnesses to enforce them before and after release.
• Communicate Up and Across: Translate technical trade-offs into clear recommendations for the Director of AI and business stakeholders; manage delivery risks and dependencies proactively.

Benefits

• Medical/dental/vision plans, which start from day one!
• Life and accident insurance
• 401(K) and Roth options
• Tax-advantaged accounts (HSA, FSA)
• Educational expense reimbursement
• Paid parental leave
• Digital mental health services (Talkspace)
• Flexible work hours (availability varies by office and job function)
• Training programs
• Gallagher Thrive program – elevating your health through challenges, workshops and digital fitness programs for your overall wellbeing
• Charitable matching gift program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed