Lead AI Engineer – Production AI Systems

GR8 People, Inc.; Baltimore (MD); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 309,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work schedule

Competitive compensation

Annual bonus eligibility

Job summary

T. Rowe Price Labs is hiring a Lead Software Engineer for AI Engineering in Baltimore or NYC. You will architect and deliver production-grade AI agents, guide incubation of new AI products, and mentor engineers. The role blends hands-on coding with strategic direction and cross-team collaboration.

The position offers hybrid work flexibility, opportunities to influence standards, and exposure to cutting-edge AI frameworks within a trusted financial services firm.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience, with 8+ years of progressive software engineering experience.
• Extensive hands-on software engineering experience in object-oriented languages such as Python, Java, or JavaScript/TypeScript, including experience leading technical delivery across teams or major initiatives.
• Deep hands-on experience designing and delivering AI-enabled systems, intelligent workflows, or agentic applications in production or near-production environments.
• Strong expertise in modern AI engineering patterns such as agent orchestration, tool/function calling, retrieval-based systems, prompt and context engineering, evaluation, observability, guardrails, and failure handling.
• Demonstrated ability to architect production AI systems and make informed trade-offs across model capability, quality, latency, cost, reliability, security, and maintainability.
• Extensive experience architecting and delivering cloud-native solutions using AWS or equivalent, containerized microservices, APIs, and modern software delivery practices.
• Strong understanding of evaluation and testing strategies for AI systems, including approaches for measuring and improving non-deterministic system behavior.
• Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, architecture, and system-design skills, with demonstrated ability to lead engineers through complex and ambiguous technical challenges.
• Demonstrated commitment to engineering excellence through setting and upholding standards for automated testing, code reviews, observability, security, and continuous delivery.
• Strong communication and influence skills, with the ability to shape technical direction across engineering, product, business, and senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and raising technical capability across teams.
• Passion for staying current with the rapidly evolving AI landscape and the judgement to distinguish promising technologies from short-lived trends.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, development, deployment, and evolution of complex production-grade AI agents and intelligent systems.
• Set technical direction for AI solutions, making informed trade-offs across models, orchestration patterns, retrieval, tools, data, infrastructure, latency, cost, security, reliability, and long-term maintainability.
• Lead teams through ambiguous and technically complex AI problems, from experimentation and architecture through production adoption and scale.
• Define and evolve engineering standards for production AI, including evaluation, testing, observability, guardrails, failure handling, security, and responsible deployment.
• Guide the development of reusable AI capabilities and shared platform components across areas such as agent orchestration, tool use, retrieval-based systems, evaluation frameworks, observability, and guardrails.
• Evaluate emerging models, frameworks, tools, and AI engineering approaches and provide technical direction on when and how they should be adopted.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership and mentorship to engineers, raising the bar on architecture, engineering quality, problem solving, and execution.
• Lead technical design and code reviews and help resolve complex engineering challenges across teams and systems.
• Drive the Build-Operate-Transfer model by incubating new AI products, hardening them for production, and partnering with business-aligned technology teams to transition proven solutions for long-term ownership and scale.
• Ensure AI systems achieve measurable quality, production readiness, operational observability, appropriate safety controls, and sustainable total cost of ownership.
• Identify opportunities for shared AI platforms and abstractions, balancing reusable enterprise capabilities with product-specific requirements.
• Identify and pursue opportunities to apply AI in ways that accelerate workflows, improve decision-making, and create scalable business impact across the firm.

Skills

Python

Java

JavaScript/TypeScript

AI engineering

AWS

Leadership

Mentoring

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

T. Rowe Price Labs is hiring a Lead Software Engineer for AI Engineering in Baltimore or NYC. You will architect and deliver production-grade AI agents, guide incubation of new AI products, and mentor engineers. The role blends hands-on coding with strategic direction and cross-team collaboration.

The position offers hybrid work flexibility, opportunities to influence standards, and exposure to cutting-edge AI frameworks within a trusted financial services firm.