AI Tech Lead — Hands-on Agent Architect & Mentor

Crowe; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 102,000 - 204,000; Full time

Job summary

Crowe is seeking an AI Tech Lead to design, build, and operate AI agents that accelerate Crowe's Audit services. You will work hands‑on with Python, maintain agent behavior resources, and own end‑to‑end outcomes within a forward deployed engineer model alongside Audit practitioners.

You will lead pattern development, scale engineering practices, and mentor engineers while shaping an evolving portfolio of AI agents and supporting systems in a hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience developing, implementing, and supporting enterprise applications and services.
• 5+ years of professional Python development experience, with a strong track record of building enterprise‑grade applications and services.
• Demonstrated ability to write clean, maintainable, modular, testable, and well‑structured Python code designed for long‑term support and scalability - production‑grade software that does not create technical debt.
• 1+ years of hands‑on experience designing, developing, and productionizing AI agents or AI‑assisted workflows using a major AI platform or model provider such as Microsoft, Anthropic, or OpenAI.
• Hands‑on experience developing agents using a Skills‑based architecture, including authoring and maintaining Skills definitions, markdown‑based instructions, supporting resources, and executable code used by agents.
• Experience testing and evaluating AI systems, including automated evaluators, representative test cases, regression testing, and analysis of agent failure modes.
• Demonstrated ability to embrace and advocate for AI‑assisted software engineering practices, including the effective use of coding assistants (e.g. Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot), automated testing, and design‑time AI tools to accelerate solution design, improve quality, and enhance developer productivity.
• Demonstrated project management experience - scoping, planning, and managing technical projects/initiatives end‑to‑end in a fast‑paced, cross‑functional environment - with a strong track record of proactive, independent problem‑solving.
• Experience providing technical leadership to software engineering teams, including mentoring engineers, conducting code and design reviews, and establishing engineering practices and standards.
• Experience designing and deploying AI/ML solutions on major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP), including the use of managed AI services, cloud‑native integration patterns, scalable data architectures, and secure, enterprise‑grade deployments. Azure experience preferred

Responsibilities

• Own the design, development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of AI agents and agent‑assisted workflows that accelerate the execution of common tasks across Crowe's Audit practice.
• Operate as a forward deployed engineer paired directly with an Audit SME - sitting with practitioners, learning the workflow firsthand, and designing the agent as it is built rather than from a static spec.
• Remain hands‑on in development: write, review, test, and maintain substantial Python codebases and the Skills, instructions, prompts, and supporting resources that define agent behavior.
• Manage project scope, timelines, and stakeholder communication for the agents you own - balancing hands‑on delivery with the planning, prioritization, and coordination expected of a senior technical lead.
• Design and develop agents using a Skills‑based architecture - modular, reusable capabilities that can be efficiently discovered, invoked, tested, maintained, and enhanced over time.
• Serve as the technical authority for the agent layer, making key design and implementation decisions while partnering with architects and engineering teams to ensure alignment with the broader Audit technology ecosystem.
• Implement and maintain monitoring, observability, and alerting for agents running in production, including trace‑level visibility into agent reasoning and tool calls, to proactively detect, diagnose, and resolve issues.
• Build and Scale the Engineering Capability
• Establish reusable engineering patterns and development practices that let a growing portfolio of agents be developed, evaluated, deployed, supported, and enhanced sustainably.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps to automate testing, evaluation, and deployment of agents across environments.
• As the portfolio grows, lead a small team of forward deployed engineers that advance the roadmap per the audit stakeholders they serve.
• Participate in the development and evolution of agent evaluation strategies, including representative test cases, automated evaluators, regression testing, quantifiable accuracy metrics, and processes for identifying and addressing changes in agent behavior.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership, including code and design reviews, as the agent portfolio and supporting team grow.
• Promote collaboration across the Audit BU and the broader Studio to surface opportunities, share reusable patterns, and avoid duplicated build effort.

Skills

8+ years software engineering

5+ years Python

AI agents experience

Cloud platforms

Forward deployed engineer experience

Mentoring/leadership

Code review

Strong communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/IT/Engineering

Tools

Azure DevOps

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Crowe is seeking an AI Tech Lead to design, build, and operate AI agents that accelerate Crowe's Audit services. You will work hands‑on with Python, maintain agent behavior resources, and own end‑to‑end outcomes within a forward deployed engineer model alongside Audit practitioners.

You will lead pattern development, scale engineering practices, and mentor engineers while shaping an evolving portfolio of AI agents and supporting systems in a hybrid work environment.