Innovation Lead AI Developer

Kirkland & Ellis; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 233,000 - 320,000; Full time

Job summary

Kirkland & Ellis seeks an Innovation Lead AI Developer to join Innovation Engineering and own the technical direction, architecture, and delivery quality of AI projects. You will remain hands-on while mentoring engineers, partnering with attorneys and business leaders, and setting secure, scalable foundations for fast-moving environments.

You’ll define architecture, review designs, and drive strategic technical decisions across product families, collaborating with consultants and IT to ensure

Qualifications

• Nine years of experience delivering software or AI solutions in professional services, legal, or technical environments.
• Advanced Python skills and production experience with RAG pipelines and agentic/workflow orchestration.
• Experience designing and operating LLM evaluation frameworks and cloud deployments (Azure).

Responsibilities

• Define and document architecture, platform choices, system boundaries, integration patterns, and engineering standards for an assigned workstream or product family.
• Stay hands-on by developing the highest-risk components and creating reusable templates, libraries, and deployment patterns.
• Review designs, sequence engineers’ work, remove blockers, and serve as escalation point for complex decisions.
• Translate ambiguous legal and business needs into clear technical plans with measurable outcomes, milestones, and success criteria.
• Oversee evaluation results, security, monitoring, maintainability, incident response, documentation, and health of production solutions.
• Lead build-versus-adopt assessments and conduct technical diligence on vendor platforms and third-party tools.
• Lead discovery and roadmap discussions with partners, practice group leaders, business unit heads, embedded teams, and IT, explaining technical choices clearly.
• Collaborate with external consultants and vendor engineers to support successful joint delivery.
• Mentor developers and contribute reusable insights to shared standards and training.

Skills

Python

RAG pipelines

agentic workflows

Orchestration frameworks

Vector databases

Knowledge graph

LLM evaluation

CI/CD

Monitoring & Observability

Microsoft Azure

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

Microsoft Azure

Job description

About Kirkland & Ellis

At Kirkland & Ellis, we don’t just meet the standard for legal excellence — we set it. Our culture is built on teamwork, ingenuity and an unwavering commitment to continuous growth. We tackle the most sophisticated legal challenges with bold ideas and innovative solutions, powered by the exceptional experience and ambition of our 7,000+ people, including 4,000+ attorneys, across 24 offices worldwide. Our dedicated professionals share our lawyers’ commitment to excellence and show up each day to do meaningful work that helps drive global business, investment and innovation forward.

What You’ll Do

Do you want to apply advanced artificial intelligence engineering to transform how a leading law firm serves clients and operates its business?

As an Innovation Lead AI Developer, you’ll join Innovation Engineering to build intelligent products and data-driven solutions that improve quality, speed, and decision-making across legal work and firm operations. This firm-wide role reports to Innovation Engineering leadership and owns the technical direction, architecture, and delivery quality of a workstream or product family within the artificial intelligence portfolio.

You’ll remain hands‑on with complex technical work while guiding assigned engineers, partnering with attorneys and business leaders, and establishing secure, scalable foundations in fast-moving or newly built environments. This is a lead individual contributor position with no formal direct reports and occasional travel. The schedule for this position is: Monday through Friday from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, with hours that may vary.

• Define and document architecture, platform choices, system boundaries, integration patterns, and engineering standards for an assigned workstream or product family.
• Stay substantially hands‑on by developing the highest-risk or most novel components and creating reusable templates, libraries, evaluation tools, and deployment patterns.
• Review designs, sequence engineers’ work, remove technical blockers, and serve as the escalation point for complex architecture and design decisions.
• Translate ambiguous legal and business needs into clear technical plans with measurable outcomes, milestones, and success criteria.
• Oversee evaluation results, security, monitoring, maintainability, incident response, documentation, and the overall health of production solutions.
• Lead build-versus-adopt assessments and conduct technical diligence on vendor platforms and third‑party tools.
• Lead discovery and roadmap discussions with partners, practice group leaders, business unit heads, embedded teams, and Information Technology (IT), explaining technical choices and trade‑offs in clear language.
• Collaborate constructively with external consultants, vendor engineering teams, and forward‑deployed engineers to support successful joint delivery.
• Mentor developers at multiple career levels, provide input on their growth, and contribute reusable insights to shared standards, playbooks, and training.

What You’ll Bring

• Education: A bachelor’s degree.
• At least nine years of experience delivering software or artificial intelligence solutions in professional services, legal, or technical environments, including success setting technical direction for a team or product area.
• Advanced Python skills and deep production experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, agentic workflows, orchestration frameworks, vector databases, and knowledge‑graph‑backed solutions.
• Experience designing and operating Large Language Model (LLM) evaluation frameworks in production and using results to inform architecture and product decisions.
• Experience with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), monitoring and observability, secure deployment, and performance at scale using Microsoft Azure or a comparable cloud platform.
• A record of establishing standards, infrastructure, and reusable patterns in evolving environments while helping other engineers grow through mentorship and thoughtful review.
• The credibility and communication skills to lead discussions with senior non-technical stakeholders, explain complex topics clearly, and work effectively with vendors and consultants.
• Experience in a law firm, legal technology company, or professional services environment, particularly involving Microsoft Azure, vendor engineering teams, or legal use cases such as due diligence, contract review, and legal research.

Compensation

Compensation Range:

Chicago: $233,000 - $320,000

Equal Employment Opportunity

All employment decisions, including the recruiting, hiring, placement, training availability, promotion, compensation, evaluation, disciplinary actions, and termination of employment (if necessary) are made without regard to the employee’s race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy or childbirth, personal appearance, family responsibilities, sexual orientation or preference, gender identity, political affiliation, source of income, place of residence, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military veteran status, unfavorable discharge from military service, physical or mental disability, or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law.