Director of AI Engineering

Richard, Wayne & Roberts; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits

Job summary

Richard, Wayne & Roberts is seeking a Director of AI Engineering to build and lead a new AI function from the ground up. This strategic role requires hands-on technical leadership to shape AI strategy, architecture, infrastructure, and team development while delivering production AI solutions.

The role emphasizes deploying agentic AI architectures, managing GPU infrastructure, and scaling both cloud and on-prem systems. Arlington, VA onsite with direct hire and benefits.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software, data, ML, or AI engineering.
• 3+ years leading technical engineering teams.
• Hands-on experience deploying production AI/ML systems at enterprise scale.
• Deep experience with LLMs and self-hosting open-weight models.
• Experience designing agentic AI architectures.
• Strong understanding of GPU infrastructure, model serving, inference optimization, and capacity planning.
• Experience building engineering teams or technical functions from the ground up.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a high-performing AI/ML engineering team.
• Define the AI engineering strategy, architecture, and technical roadmap.
• Design and deploy agentic AI systems and AI agents leveraging operational and commercial data.
• Lead the deployment and optimization of self-hosted, open-weight LLMs.
• Drive model serving, quantization, inference optimization, GPU utilization, and performance.
• Design and scale cloud and on-premises GPU infrastructure.
• Lead infrastructure capacity planning, procurement, and vendor management.
• Remain hands-on with architecture and early solution development as the team grows.
• Establish enterprise-grade standards for scalable, reliable AI/ML systems.

Skills

Leadership

AI/ML systems

LLMs (self-hosted)

Agentic AI architectures

GPU infrastructure

Model serving & optimization

Team building from ground up

Production deployment

Tools

Databricks

Job description

We’re seeking a Director of AI Engineering to build and lead a new AI Engineering function from the ground up. This is a highly visible opportunity for a hands‑on technical leader who wants to shape AI strategy, architecture, infrastructure, and team development while delivering production AI solutions.

What You’ll Do:

• Build and lead a high-performing AI/ML engineering team
• Define the AI engineering strategy, architecture, and technical roadmap
• Design and deploy agentic AI systems and AI agents leveraging operational and commercial data
• Lead the deployment and optimization of self-hosted, open-weight LLMs
• Drive model serving, quantization, inference optimization, GPU utilization, and performance
• Design and scale cloud and on-premises GPU infrastructure
• Lead infrastructure capacity planning, procurement, and vendor management
• Remain hands‑on with architecture and early solution development as the team grows
• Establish enterprise‑grade standards for scalable, reliable AI/ML systems

What We’re Looking For:

• 10+ years of software, data, ML, or AI engineering experience
• 3+ years leading technical engineering teams
• Current hands‑on experience deploying production AI/ML systems at enterprise scale
• Deep experience with LLMs and self-hosting open-weight models, beyond commercial API integrations
• Experience designing and deploying agentic AI architectures
• Strong understanding of GPU infrastructure, model serving, inference optimization, and capacity planning
• Experience building engineering teams or technical functions from the ground up

Strong Pluses:

• Databricks
• AI/ML experience within industrial, operational technology (OT), or safety‑critical environments
• Ontology or semantic modeling experience

This role is ideal for an AI engineering leader who is still deeply technical and wants the opportunity to build the team, platform, and AI capabilities from the ground up.

Direct hire with Benefits

Location: Arlington, VA — full-time onsite