Lead AI Engineer

Axya; Montreal; Remote; CAD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited vacation

Comprehensive health insurance

Flexible work schedule

100% remote

High-impact, collaborative team

Job summary

Axya is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to own the technical direction of our AI systems. You will drive architecture, evaluation, and safe production deployment, influencing tool choices and model selection. You will mentor teammates and collaborate across Product, Customer Success, and CTO-level stakeholders.

You will work with enterprise data, ERP integrations and procurement workflows, shaping a scalable AI platform for our customers. Remote-friendly role with strong growth opportunities.

Qualifications

• Experience shipping LLM-based or ML-powered systems to production with real users and real consequences.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: fluency in Python and backend services.
• Hands-on experience with prompting, tool use, retrieval, agent/workflow orchestration and evaluation.
• Sound technical judgment to make architecture tradeoffs and own the outcome.
• Technical leadership: setting direction, mentoring, and leading projects.
• Clear communication with engineers and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture of Axya's AI layer, including agent/LLM workflows and data connections.
• Build eval frameworks, test sets and monitoring to prove reliability and improvement.
• Deliver production-ready AI features from prototype to observable systems.
• Make model/tooling decisions, balancing quality, latency, cost and data constraints.
• Ensure customer-grade reliability, data handling, access control and auditability.
• Set engineering standards and mentor other engineers in applied AI.
• Translate customer usage and failure cases into the next improvements.

Skills

LLM production

Python

AI evaluation

Architecture tradeoffs

Technical leadership

Communication

Job description

About Axya

Axya is building AI-powered technology that's transforming how the manufacturing industry sources and procures parts. Our platform connects manufacturers with suppliers and automates the entire source-to-pay process — from sourcing and quoting to procurement — making it faster, simpler, and more cost-effective for companies sourcing custom parts. By digitizing traditionally manual workflows, Axya enables manufacturers to operate with greater efficiency and competitiveness.

Axya is building AI-powered technology that's transforming how the manufacturing industry sources and procures parts. Our platform connects manufacturers with suppliers and automates the entire source-to-pay process — from sourcing and quoting to procurement — making it faster, simpler, and more cost-effective for companies sourcing custom parts. By digitizing traditionally manual workflows, Axya enables manufacturers to operate with greater efficiency and competitiveness.

Role Overview

Our product is only as good as the AI behind it. As Lead AI Engineer, you will own the technical direction and quality of Axya's AI systems: how they reason over messy enterprise data, how we measure whether they are right, and how we ship improvements safely to production.

You will report to the CTO and work closely with Product, Customer Success and the engineers who build our platform and integrations. You will be hands‑on in the code, and you will also raise the technical bar for the team through architecture, evaluation, code review and mentorship. As the team grows, your scope can grow with it.

What You'll Own

• The architecture of Axya's AI layer: agent and LLM workflows, retrieval, tool use, and how they connect to customer ERP and procurement data.
• Evaluation and quality: build the eval frameworks, test sets and monitoring that tell us whether the copilot is accurate, reliable and improving. Be the person who can say "this is ready" and prove it.
• Production delivery: take AI features from prototype to dependable, observable, cost-aware production systems.
• Model and tooling decisions: choose, benchmark and evolve models, vendors and frameworks, balancing quality, latency, cost and customer data constraints.
• Customer‑grade reliability and security: work with the CTO and security lead to meet enterprise expectations on data handling, access control, privacy and auditability.
• Technical standards and mentorship: set engineering practices for AI development and coach other engineers in applied AI.
• Closing the loop with customers: turn real customer usage and failure cases into the next round of improvements.

What We’re Looking For

Must Have

• Experience shipping LLM‑based or ML‑powered systems to production, with real users and real consequences, not only prototypes.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: fluency in Python and comfort building and operating backend services.
• Hands‑on experience with the core building blocks of applied AI: prompting and tool use, retrieval, agent and workflow orchestration, and evaluation.
• Sound technical judgment: you can make architecture tradeoffs, explain them clearly and own the outcome.
• Technical leadership: setting direction, reviewing others' work, mentoring or leading projects, even without formal reports.
• Clear communication with both engineers and non‑technical stakeholders.

Strongly Preferred

• Experience with enterprise or B2B products where reliability, security and customer trust are non‑negotiable.
• Experience with messy structured data from ERP, supply chain, procurement, finance or operations systems.
• Experience building evaluation and observability tooling for non‑deterministic systems.
• Experience in an early‑stage or high‑growth environment, or evidence of building something from a blank page.
• Experience managing cost, latency and model‑selection tradeoffs at scale.

Nice to Have

• Fine‑tuning or model adaptation experience.
• Experience in manufacturing, procurement or supply‑chain domains.
• Familiarity with enterprise security and compliance expectations (SOC 2, data residency, etc.).
• Fluency in French.

We do not require a specific number of years, a degree, or a particular employer background. We care about what you have built and what it achieved.

AI & Technology Expectations

You will use AI to build AI. We expect you to use coding assistants, automated evaluation, synthetic test generation and agentic workflows to move faster and raise quality, while applying your own judgment on what to trust. We care about how you multiply your own output and the team's, not which specific tools you favor. We also expect you to keep a clear view of the risks: hallucination, data leakage, drift and cost.

What Success Looks Like

After 30 days

• You understand the current architecture, the main customer use cases and where the AI fails today.
• You have shipped at least one meaningful improvement or fix.
• You have a written assessment of the biggest technical risks and opportunities.

After 90 days

• A baseline evaluation framework is in place and used in release decisions.
• You have led delivery of one major AI feature or re‑architecture to production.
• Quality, latency and cost are measured and visible to the team.

After 6 to 12 months

• Accuracy and reliability on core customer workflows have improved by a measurable margin.
• An AI engineering roadmap is co‑owned with Product and the CTO.
• Repeatable practices (evals, release process, observability) are followed by other engineers.
• If hiring begins, you have shaped the profile and bar for the next AI and ML hires.

Why Join Axya

• Unlimited vacation policy: because we believe in balance.
• Comprehensive health insurance: your well‑being matters.
• Flexible work schedule: results matter more than hours.
• 100% remote: get the job done wherever you prefer.
• Be part of a high‑impact, collaborative team making real change in a traditional industry.