Lead AI Engineer

BotFriday AI; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 350,000 - 750,000; Full time

Job summary

BotFriday seeks a senior software engineer to lead AI initiatives across internal operations, engineering delivery, and customer-facing workflows. You will design and build AI-powered applications in Python, own projects end-to-end, and set standards while mentoring engineers.

Candidates should have 8+ years of software experience, deep Python expertise, and strong production-class judgment. You will collaborate with product and business teams to deliver practical, scalable AI solutions.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Deep, hands-on Python.
• Proven track record building and deploying AI-powered applications.
• Strong judgement on where AI should be applied in internal processes, workflows, and products.
• Solid grounding in software architecture and production environments.
• Experience leading technical initiatives and mentoring engineers.
• Clear written and verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Lead AI initiatives across internal process automation, engineering delivery, and customer-facing workflows.
• Design and build AI-powered applications and workflows in Python.
• Own initiatives from problem definition through experimentation to implementation and delivery.
• Set architecture and engineering standards for projects.
• Collaborate with engineering, product and business teams to translate problems into practical systems.
• Evaluate new AI tooling for production use and ROI guidance.
• Ensure what you ship is reliable, scalable, and maintainable.
• Mentor engineers working on AI projects.

Skills

Python

AI applications

Mentoring

Communication

Team leadership

Job description

This is the senior technical seat on a growing engineering team that is putting AI to work in three places at once: internal operations, the way the team builds and ships, and the products customers actually touch. You will decide what gets built, build a good deal of it yourself, and carry it through to production.

It suits someone who wants the whole problem rather than a slice of it, and who would rather ship a reliable AI system than run experiments that never leave the notebook.

What you'll do

• Lead AI initiatives across internal process automation, engineering delivery, and customer-facing workflows
• Find the places where AI genuinely removes work, and say no to the places where it does not
• Design and build AI-powered applications and workflows in Python
• Own initiatives from problem definition and experimentation through to implementation and delivery
• Make the architecture and implementation calls, and set the engineering standards around them
• Work with engineering, product and business teams to turn vague problems into practical systems
• Evaluate new AI tooling and judge where it earns a place in production
• Keep what you ship reliable, scalable and maintainable
• Mentor the engineers working alongside you on AI projects

What we're looking for

• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• Deep, hands-on Python
• A track record of building and deploying AI-powered applications, automation or intelligent workflows
• Judgement about where AI belongs across internal processes, engineering workflows and customer products
• Strong grounding in software architecture, engineering practice and production environments
• Experience leading technical initiatives and mentoring engineers
• Clear written and verbal communication

Who tends to do well here

Engineers who take ownership and finish things. Who stay hands-on. Who are curious about new AI tooling without being distracted by it. Who explain technical decisions clearly to people who are not engineers, and who lead by building rather than by directing.