Hybrid Lead AI Engineer: Enterprise LLM & RAG Architect

IFS; Madrid; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

IFS is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to design and build applied AI solutions that drive measurable business value from concept to scalable production. You'll architect enterprise AI systems using LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic workflows while guiding engineering teams.

You will lead technical strategy, mentor engineers, collaborate with product teams, and engage customers and partners to identify opportunities and deliver impact.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, AI, data science, or related field.
• 8+ years of professional experience in AI, ML, and/or software engineering with proven delivery.
• Experience bringing incubated AI solutions to production across full lifecycle.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Golang, C#, or TypeScript.
• Experience with context engineering, including retrieval architecture, embeddings, vector databases, search technologies, and retrieval optimization.
• Strong backend fundamentals: APIs, distributed services, cloud-native architectures, CI/CD, integration, automation, and security.
• A solid background in DevOps and MLOps; IaC with Terraform and Helm.
• Ability to integrate enterprise apps, processes, workflows, and data platforms.
• Experience designing AI-driven architectures using LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows, orchestration, and enterprise data sources.
• Understanding of AI system lifecycle, including evaluation, deployment, monitoring, governance, and improvement.
• Experience with MLOps lifecycles, deployment pipelines, model operations, and observability.
• Experience working with customers, stakeholders, domain experts to deliver solutions.
• Demonstrated prototyping, experimentation, measurement, and iteration in enterprise environments.
• Strong communication; able to explain complex concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Comfortable in ambiguous environments; translate problems into clear technical strategies and measurable outcomes.
• Experience leading discussions, mentoring engineers, and driving alignment across teams.
• Track record influencing tech direction through hands-on delivery and experimentation.

Responsibilities

• Design and architect AI-powered systems using LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows, and orchestration patterns with enterprise data.
• Develop secure, production-ready cloud-native platforms and services that orchestrate models, tools, retrieval systems, and workflows.
• Build rapid prototypes and proofs-of-concept to validate technologies and identify business opportunities.
• Establish evaluation, monitoring, quality practices including testing, benchmarking, observability, and continuous improvement.
• Lead technical design discussions, architecture reviews, and drive engineering best practices across teams.
• Mentor engineers and develop reusable AI capabilities and frameworks to accelerate delivery.
• Collaborate with product teams, architects, domain experts, customers, and partners to deliver impact.
• Influence AI strategy and long-term technology direction through hands-on delivery and external engagement.

Skills

Python

Golang

C#

TypeScript

Context engineering

APIs

CI/CD

DevOps

MLOps

LLM platforms

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Master’s degree advantageous

Tools

Terraform

Helm

Kubernetes

Docker

LangGraph

Semantic Kernel

Ragas

Promptfoo

MLFlow

Job description

IFS is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to design and build applied AI solutions that drive measurable business value from concept to scalable production. You'll architect enterprise AI systems using LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic workflows while guiding engineering teams.

You will lead technical strategy, mentor engineers, collaborate with product teams, and engage customers and partners to identify opportunities and deliver impact.