Founding AI Lead - Forward Deployed Engineering

Long Ridge Partners; New York (NY); On-site; USD 350,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

Long Ridge Partners seeks a Founding AI Lead for Forward Deployed Engineering to build the function from the ground up. You will hire, define how it operates, and set the technical bar while staying hands-on to ship AI products in flagship workflows.

You'll work with senior leaders to identify problems worth solving, shape opportunities into plans, and drive prototypes to production within a regulated financial services setting.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software/AI engineering experience with leadership
• Experience building enterprise-grade AI products
• Proven ability to hire, mentor and scale teams
• Hands-on AI development including model integration and retrieval design
• Experience with unstructured data in finance workflows
• Strong production engineering discipline (CI/CD, security, testing)

Responsibilities

• Build and lead the FDE function from scratch with VP-level engineers
• Define operating model and standards for AI products
• Hire, mentor, and retain engineers while maintaining culture
• Ship production AI products in high-value firm workflows
• Set technical standards for architecture, security, and observability
• Collaborate with Security, Compliance, Legal, Data, and Infra teams
• Balance prototyping with moving to production in a regulated environment

Skills

AI engineering

Team leadership

Enterprise software

Production engineering

AI application development

Financial services fluency

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/IS

Tools

OpenAI

Anthropic

Gemini

Azure AI

Databricks

SQL Server

Job description

Founding AI Lead, Forward Deployed Engineering

About the Opportunity

A leading global alternative asset management firm, with more than $300 billion in assets under management and teams across private equity, impact, credit, real estate, and market solutions, is hiring a founding AI lead to help build a new Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) team.

This is a builder-leader role. You'll set up the function from scratch: hiring the team, defining how it operates, and setting the technical bar. You'll also stay hands‑on, writing code and shipping production‑ready AI products inside the firm's highest‑value workflows. You'll start with a small team of VP‑level engineers and scale the capability as demand and impact grow.

You'll work directly with Partners, Managing Directors, and department heads to find the problems worth solving, shape ambiguous opportunities into real plans, and decide when a prototype is ready to become a product.

What You'll Do

• Build and lead the FDE function, starting with VP‑level engineers. Hire, mentor, and retain strong engineers, and set the culture, standards, and talent model as the team grows.
• Manage team capacity, prioritization, and resource allocation to maximize business impact across the FDE portfolio.
• Define the operating model: how opportunities are identified, prioritized, scoped, evaluated, shipped, adopted, handed off, scaled, or retired.
• Build AI products, digital coworkers, and workflow solutions that solve meaningful business problems across the firm.
• Guide the team on when to use agentic workflows, multi‑agent architectures, retrieval systems, automation, traditional software, process redesign, or simply recommend not building at all.
• Set technical standards for AI products, including architecture patterns, security, access controls, observability, documentation, support expectations, and production readiness.
• Establish firm‑wide standards for AI evaluation, reliability, and release readiness, covering quality, safety, business effectiveness, regression testing, and model or workflow drift.
• Partner with Security, Compliance, Legal, Data, Infrastructure, and application teams so AI solutions respect information barriers, entitlement models, audit requirements, and secure development practices.
• Partner with senior stakeholders to set clear expectations on what AI systems can and cannot do.

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering or AI engineering and experience leading teams and delivering complex enterprise solutions.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field (equivalent practical experience considered).
• A proven record of building teams and setting technical standards, raising the bar without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Experience building, scaling, or transforming an engineering function, platform, or capability, including the standards, talent model, and operating cadence
• Hands‑on AI application development, including model integration, context and retrieval design, evaluation frameworks, agentic workflows, workflow orchestration, human‑in‑the‑loop processes, and production deployment.
• Experience building AI solutions on unstructured data such as investment memos, CIMs, credit agreements, LP communications, contracts, financial statements, and presentations.
• Strong production engineering discipline: code review, testing, version control, CI/CD, secure development, documentation, and operational ownership.
• A product mindset: you identify the underlying problem, weigh alternative approaches, and deliver solutions people actually adopt.
• The ability to earn trust quickly with senior stakeholders, communicate trade‑offs clearly, and turn ambiguous business needs into an executable technical plan.
• Financial services fluency, with interest in or experience with investment, fund operations, or financial services workflows.

Technology

The team is technology agnostic and picks the right tool for each problem. You'll need credibility in modern AI application development and enterprise‑grade software delivery. The team works with a range of technologies, including:

• OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Azure AI, Microsoft Copilot, and Copilot Studio
• Agentic and multi‑agent architectures, tool calling, orchestration frameworks, and RAG
• Evaluation, observability, and model monitoring frameworks
• APIs, integrations, workflow automation, and distributed systems
• Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and cloud‑native architectures
• Databricks, SQL Server, vector databases, and modern data platforms
• CI/CD, test automation, and secure development practices

Why Join?

• Founding role: You'll build the function, its standards, and its culture from the ground up, with real input on how AI gets built and deployed across the firm.
• High‑value problems: Your work will sit inside core investment and fund workflows, with direct exposure to senior investment professionals and operating leaders.
• Ownership: You decide what gets built, what gets bought, and what gets left alone, and you own the path from prototype to production.
• Real constraints, real impact: Information barriers, entitlements, and audit requirements are part of the job, so what you ship has to work in a regulated environment and get used.
• Scale potential: You'll start with a small team of senior engineers and have the chance to grow the function as demand and impact increase.
• Broad technical latitude: The team is technology agnostic, so you'll work across multiple model providers, cloud platforms, and modern data tooling.