Lead AI Engineer

Qualified Health PBC; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

Qualified Health PBC is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to set the technical vision for agentic AI systems across its portfolio. Based in Palo Alto, CA (onsite), you will lead multi-year infrastructure planning, establish company-wide LLM evaluation and safety standards, and mentor senior engineers.

You will guide how AI infrastructure investments align with overall strategy, work with founders and leadership, and stay ahead of frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral.

Qualifications

• 8+ years building production software, including 4+ years AI-powered/LLM-driven apps in production.
• Proven experience setting technical direction and standards across multiple teams.
• Deep expertise in MLOps, model deployment, and workflow automation at org level.
• Ability to operate with full autonomy on ambiguous, high-stakes problems.
• Strong history influencing technical decisions at leadership level.

Responsibilities

• Define multi-year technical strategy and architecture for agentic workflow infrastructure across the product portfolio (100+ workflows).
• Serve as AI engineering voice in cross-functional leadership decisions on product direction, build-vs-buy, and platform investment.
• Set org-wide engineering standards for LLM evaluation, deployment, safety, and monitoring.

Skills

Python programming

AI/LLM systems

Mentoring staff engineers

Technical leadership

MLOps

Stakeholder collaboration

Education

Bachelor's + 10+ years

Tools

OpenAI

Anthropic

Mistral

Model deployment

MLOps tooling

Job description

Qualified Health PBC is building agentic AI systems across its full product portfolio, and it’s looking for a Lead AI Engineer to set the technical vision and deliver the platform strategy. Based in Palo Alto, CA (onsite), this role spans multi-year infrastructure planning, org-wide standards for LLM evaluation and safety, and hands-on engineering on the most ambiguous problems. With an emphasis on mentoring, the Lead AI Engineer will also help shape how applied AI roles grow across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Define the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for agentic workflow infrastructure supporting the full Qualified Health product portfolio, including 100+ workflows and growth.
• Serve as the applied AI engineering voice in cross-functional and leadership-level decisions on product direction, build-vs-buy, and platform investment.
• Set org-wide engineering standards for LLM evaluation, deployment, safety, and monitoring, aligning with the company’s broader AI governance approach.
• Act as a technical escalation point for the most challenging, high-ambiguity problems across product lines.
• Mentor and develop Staff-level engineers, contributing to the technical career ladder for applied AI roles.
• Stay ahead of the frontier by evaluating emerging models, frameworks, and techniques (including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral) and determining what to adopt at Qualified Health.
• Partner with founders and engineering leadership on how AI infrastructure investment ties to overall company strategy.

Requirements

• Python required with a deep software engineering foundation and a track record of architecting systems used company-wide.
• 8+ years building production software, including 4+ years building and scaling AI-powered / LLM-driven applications in production.
• Proven experience setting technical direction and standards adopted across multiple teams, beyond a single product line.
• Deep expertise in MLOps, model deployment, and workflow automation at an organizational or platform level.
• Ability to operate with full autonomy on ambiguous, high-stakes technical and strategic problems.
• Strong history influencing technical decisions at the leadership level, including with non-technical stakeholders.

Technologies

• Python
• LLM
• MLOps
• OpenAI
• Anthropic
• Mistral

Benefits

• Competitive salaries with equity packages
• Robust medical/dental/vision insurance
• Flexible working hours
• Hybrid work options
• Inclusive environment that fosters creativity and innovation
• Eligible for equity and benefits

Desirable Skills

• Bachelor’s degree + 10 years OR Master’s degree + 8 years in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Recognized expertise in applied AI and agentic systems (internally or externally), such as talks, publications, open source, or prior platform-level roles.
• Experience building AI infrastructure in a regulated or high-stakes domain such as healthcare or finance.
• History of founding or scaling a technical function from the ground up in a startup environment.
• Experience mentoring Staff-level engineers and shaping technical career ladders.

Salary: USD 230,000 - 350,000 per year. Experience: 8+ years.