AI Lead Engineer​/AI Architect

Location:

Irvine, CA and LA, CA - (2-3 days per week in the client’s Irvine office, 1 day in their downtown LA office, 1 day remote)

Duration:
Long term Contract

A highly skilled hands‑on AI Lead Engineer/Architect with 12+ years of experience in AI/ML, Data Engineering, or Software Engineering. You bring strong expertise in designing and building scalable, production‑ready AI solutions, with deep hands‑on experience in LLM‑enabled applications, agent‑based systems, and cloud‑native architectures. You are comfortable working closely with business stakeholders and leading AI‑driven innovation initiatives in an enterprise environment.

• Design and develop scalable AI/ML pipelines and intelligent applications aligned with enterprise standards.
• Build agent‑based AI workflows, automation systems, and retrieval‑based architectures (RAG, vector search, embeddings).
• Architect and implement LLM orchestration layers supporting content ideation, drafting, and editing workflows.
• Lead integration of AI solutions with backend systems and enterprise platforms (APIs, internal tools, data platform).
• Partner with product, marketing, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into AI‑driven solutions.
• Provide architectural leadership, guide offshore teams, and ensure delivery aligned with scalability, security, and governance standards.

• At least 8+ years of experience in AI/ML, Data Science, or Software Engineering.
• Hands‑on experience with LLM‑enabled applications and Generative AI.
• Experience building agent‑based/agent‑oriented AI systems.
• Strong expertise in retrieval‑based systems (RAG, vector databases, embeddings, indexing).
• Experience with API development and backend system integration.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and environment management.
• Strong understanding of observability (logging, monitoring, tracing).
• Experience deploying ML models in production environments.
• Exposure to enterprise AI workflows, automation, and governance models.

• AI/ML Solution Architecture
• LLM & Generative AI Development
• Agent‑Based Systems
• Retrieval‑Augmented Systems

• Python & Backend Development
• LLM/Generative AI Application Development
• Agent‑Based AI Systems
• RAG/Vector DB/Embeddings
• API Development & System Integration
• AWS Cloud (Cloud‑Native Development)
• CI/CD & Dev Ops Practices
• Observability (Logging, Monitoring, Tracing)

• AI‑enabled enterprise work.
• Financial / Investment domain (preferred).

• AWS / ML / AI certifications are beneficial.