System Lead Engineer

Lenovo•Chicago, IL

3d•$168,100 - $257,715•Onsite

About The Position

Lenovo is seeking two System Leads to shape the next generation of Qira, a cross-device Personal AI Intelligence. Qira creates intelligent, personalized experiences across hardware, software, and services, integrating AI into everyday user experiences. The System Lead, Ambient Intelligence will focus on ambient, always-on intelligence systems that understand user context. The System Lead, Device & Application Intelligence will focus on AI-powered systems that automate device and application usage. Both roles offer a significant opportunity to influence Lenovo's Personal AI vision and user interaction with AI across their digital ecosystem. This is an onsite position in Chicago, IL or San Jose, CA.

Requirements

8+ years professional software engineering experience
2+ years leading multi-engineer delivery
Experience in cross-platform systems with a shared core and per-OS hosts
Deep systems experience in at least two of: Rust, Kotlin/Android, Windows native, C/C++ systems
Experience shipping background / always-on workloads (battery, lifecycle, scheduling, resource budgets)
Experience in privacy-by-design: consent, least privilege, retention/deletion, fail-closed policy paths
Experience owning API/ABI boundaries between native code and application hosts
Experience delivering under launch pressure with multiple dependent teams

Nice To Haves

Multimodal sensing adjacency (screen, audio, sensors, OCR/STT, or similar signal pipelines)
On-device or edge ML integration experience (inference consumers, not necessarily model training)
Observability discipline: structured telemetry without leaking sensitive content
Remote configuration / kill-switch patterns for production safety
Consumer device, PC OEM, or mobile platform shipping experience
Excellent written communication for decisions, risks, and operating cadence
Familiarity with secure coding reviews and threat-aware design

Responsibilities

Set roadmap, milestones, and technical standards for the Ambient System team.
Lead and mentor engineers across shared core and platform host work.
Drive architecture decisions at trust boundaries (native ↔ shared core ↔ UI).
Keep delivery predictable: clear ownership, healthy planning hygiene, early escalation.
Partner with product, design, security/privacy, and adjacent teams on interfaces and SLAs that support other AI capabilities and experiences.
Represent the team in architecture, security, and launch reviews.