Senior​/Lead Software Engineer; AI-Driven Systems

Senior / Lead Software Engineer (AI-Driven Systems) Hybrid 4x a week in a NYC office

This is a lead-level engineering role for someone who wants to sit at the intersection of business problems and real, production AI.

Our client is looking for a senior, hands-on engineer who can partner directly with the business, help define how AI should be applied, and then actually build the systems that make it real. If you’re an engineer who wants real ownership, influence over AI strategy, and the chance to build meaningful systems from idea to production, this is a role where you’ll have room to lead and make your mark.

• Acting as a technical lead, working directly with business stakeholders to translate real problems into scalable AI-driven solutions
• Designing and building backend systems and microservices that support production workloads
• Defining architecture and tradeoffs, not just implementing someone else’s design
• Building, shipping, and owning AI integrations such as RAG pipelines, MCP-style architectures, and similar patterns
• Setting engineering best practices across testing, deployment, and the full development lifecycle

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience preferably with Python, with deep hands‑on backend expertise
• Proven experience building and operating production systems, not prototypes
• Strong experience with microservices, databases, and modern engineering practices
• Hands‑on experience shipping AI-powered systems into production, especially retrieval‑augmented generation or similar architectures
• Comfortable leading technical discussions and making architectural decisions

• You think like an engineer and a problem solver, not a tool chaser
• You can evaluate multiple design approaches and clearly explain tradeoffs
• You enjoy collaborating with product and business teams and can “face off” with non‑technical stakeholders when needed
• You raise the technical bar while staying pragmatic and delivery‑focused