AI Engineer Lead

Allstate; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 151,700 - 221,675; Full time

Job summary

Dormont Manufacturing Co is looking for an AI Developer to join their team in Chicago. The ideal candidate should have a strong background in Python development and experience in AI/ML solution productization.

This position involves rapid prototyping, collaboration with diverse teams, and the opportunity to innovate within a fast-paced environment. Compensation is competitive, catering to the experience and qualifications of the candidate.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of Python development experience.
• Minimum of 3 years working on AI projects.
• Deep understanding of machine learning fundamentals.

Responsibilities

• Establish AI engineering fundamentals and code quality standards.
• Participate in projects with technical expertise.
• Partner with stakeholders to iterate on PoCs.

Skills

Python development

AI/ML solutions

LLM technologies

Data analysis

Education

4-year Bachelor's Degree

Tools

MS Azure Fabric

Git

SQL

Job description

At Allstate, great things happen when our people work together to protect families and their belongings from life’s uncertainties. And for more than 90 years, our innovative drive has kept us a step ahead of our customers’ evolving needs. From advocating for seat belts, air bags and graduated driving laws, to being an industry leader in pricing sophistication, telematics, and, more recently, device and identity protection.

Job Description

At Allstate Investments, we are seeking an AI Developer who is a fast learner and rapid problem solver, capable of quickly understanding new domains, technologies, and business problems, and translating them into high impact proof‑of‑concept (PoC) solutions. This role requires the ability to move quickly from idea to working prototypes, validate value early, and then guide successful PoCs into scalable, production‑ready AI solutions.

As a member of the Investments Technology group, your work directly supports an $80bn portfolio and an organization of 300+ experts committed to excellence, innovation, and the highest ethical standards. You will be a hands‑on developer – pairing daily with other engineers and guiding adoption of LLMs, RAG, vector stores, and agentic frameworks. You’ll partner closely with product and platform leaders to build AI systems.

You will:

• Collaborate with a highly talented and diverse team of professionals
• Continuously expand your skill set by learning new technologies, tools, and methodologies
• Proactively identify opportunities for innovation, with the autonomy to rapidly explore, prototype, and validate new ideas
• Play a key role in the design, development, and deployment of AI/ML solutions
• Lead the transition of AI/ML initiatives from proof of concept to scalable, production‑ready solutions

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and socialize strong AI engineering fundamentals, design patterns, code quality standards
• Participate in projects, demonstrating technical expertise and a hands‑on approach in experimentation and productization
• Partner with product stakeholders to iterate quickly on PoCs, incorporating feedback and refining solutions in short cycles

Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of Python development
• Minimum of 3 years of experience working on AI projects, with a focus on productizing AI/ML solutions
• Deep understanding of machine learning fundamentals and ability to apply them in developing and implementing AI/ML solutions
• Experience with GenAI technologies and techniques (e.g., RAG, fine‑tuning, vector stores, Agentic frameworks)
• Data‑driven decision making, combining robust analytical thinking with sound business judgment
• Excellent communication with both technical and non‑technical team members
• Comfort with hands‑on involvement in AI/ML experimentation and model development
• Solid grasp of software development principles, including design patterns, testing, and version control such as Git (preferred)
• Inquisitive nature, with a deep understanding of both technical and business aspects (preferred)

Technical Skills Needed

1. Programming & Engineering Excellence
   • Python (advanced), APIs, pipelines, and AI orchestration
   • Java/ReactJS (optional)
2. LLM & GenAI Engineering
   • Hands‑on experience with LLMs (preferably GPT models)
   • Prompting patterns and structured outputs
   • Model evaluation including accuracy/faithfulness checks, hallucination mitigation, regression testing
   • Safety/guardrails patterns appropriate for enterprise use
3. Demonstrated ability to leverage GitHub Copilot for code acceleration:
   • Rapid scaffolding of code, services, APIs, and development
4. Data Skills — SQL + SQL Server, Microsoft Fabric (optional)
   • SQL skills
   • Query authoring, joins, indexing awareness
   • Ability to design data access patterns for AI
5. LLM & GenAI Engineering
   • Hands‑on experience with LLMs (commercial)
   • Prompting patterns and structured outputs
   • Strong experience implementing RAG architecture with ingestion pipelines, chunking strategies
   • Vector database / vector search experience with indexing, similarity search, metadata filtering
   • Experience with MCP patterns, Standardizing tool/context access for models and agent runtimes
   • Designing MCP servers/tool endpoints and integrating them into LLM apps
   • Experience implementing agentic workflows, A2A patterns such as multi‑agent collaboration (planner/executor/reviewer/retriever roles)
6. Cloud
   • MS Azure Fabric preferred
7. Observability & Production Support
   • Experience operating and supporting AI‑enabled services in production
   • Logging, metrics, tracing (APM tools such as Datadog)
   • Model/prompt monitoring, drift signals, quality regression detection

Supervisory Responsibilities

This job does not have supervisory duties.

Education

4‑year Bachelors Degree

Skills

• Building Architecture
• Emerging Technologies
• Ideation
• Large Language Model (LLM) Fine‑Tuning
• Python (Programming Language)
• Structured Query Language (SQL)

Compensation

Compensation offered for this role is 151,700.00 - 221,675.00 annually and is based on experience and qualifications.

The candidate(s) offered this position will be required to submit to a background investigation.

Joining our team isn’t just a job — it’s an opportunity. One that takes your skills and pushes them to the next level. One that encourages you to challenge the status quo. One where you can shape the future of protection while supporting causes that mean the most to you. Joining our team means being part of something bigger – a winning team making a meaningful impact.

Allstate generally does not sponsor individuals for employment‑based visas for this position.

Effective July 1, 2014, under Indiana House Enrolled Act (HEA) 1242, it is against public policy of the State of Indiana and a discriminatory practice for an employer to discriminate against a prospective employee on the basis of status as a veteran by refusing to employ an applicant on the basis that they are a veteran of the armed forces of the United States, a member of the Indiana National Guard or a member of a reserve component.

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