Applied AI Engineering Lead - End-to-End Production

Thresh Consulting; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 235,000; Full time

Job summary

Thresh Consulting is seeking an Applied AI Engineering Lead to shape and ship production AI systems for clients. You will own technical direction, architect end‑to‑end LLM solutions, and guide a 2–4 engineer team across front‑end, APIs, data, and cloud.

This role blends hands‑on build with leadership in a hybrid setting. You will focus on trusted AI, guardrails, evaluation, and cost/latency tradeoffs, while partnering with client engineering leaders and Thresh practice leads to scope new AI

Qualifications

• 7+ years building production software with 2+ years in LLM powered products.
• Strong React, TS, and Next.js for production UI work.
• Experience with MCP servers or similar tool‑integration layers.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for AI engagements and client scoping.
• Architect end‑to‑end LLM solutions and evaluate calls.
• Lead a small engineering team and mentor peers.
• Build AI‑powered, customer‑facing experiences and guardrails.

Skills

LLM engineering

React & TS

Next.js

API design

MCP servers

Vector search

Prompting frameworks

Tools

OpenAI API

Claude

LangGraph

PostgreSQL

NoSQL

Docker

AWS Bedrock

Azure OpenAI

Google Vertex AI

Job description

Thresh Consulting is seeking an Applied AI Engineering Lead to shape and ship production AI systems for clients. You will own technical direction, architect end‑to‑end LLM solutions, and guide a 2–4 engineer team across front‑end, APIs, data, and cloud.

This role blends hands‑on build with leadership in a hybrid setting. You will focus on trusted AI, guardrails, evaluation, and cost/latency tradeoffs, while partnering with client engineering leaders and Thresh practice leads to scope new AI