Lead Engineer, Machine Learning

Darwin Recruitment; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Job summary

Agentic AI Products in the US is seeking a hands-on Lead ML Engineer to guide technical delivery, mentor engineers and translate experiments into production. You will own architecture decisions, code and delivery while shaping a team building LLM-powered features and automated workflows.

Join a startup-paced environment focused on performance, reliability and cost optimization, working remotely within the US and contributing equity as part of the compensation.

Qualifications

• Experience delivering ML/AI systems into production.
• Hands-on experience building agentic AI products including tool calling and workflow orchestration.
• Experience leading engineers and owning technical delivery.
• Strong Python skills and practical experience with LLM APIs, retrieval and evaluation.
• Ability to decide on architecture and balance experimentation with production needs.
• Comfortable in a startup pace with ownership of delivery and implementation.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of LLM-powered features, AI agents and automated workflows.
• Set technical direction while remaining hands-on with architecture, coding and delivery.
• Mentor engineers, review technical work and establish strong development practices.
• Build evaluation processes to improve agent accuracy, reliability and task completion.
• Optimise inference performance, latency and cost.
• Work closely with product and engineering teams to prioritise work and ship useful AI capabilities.

Skills

Production ML systems

Agentic AI products

Team leadership

Python

LLM APIs

Architectural decisions

Job description

Lead ML Engineer

Agentic AI Products | Remote, US

We’re supporting a well-funded AI startup building agentic products that automate everyday tasks and workflows.

They’re looking for a hands-on Lead ML Engineer to guide technical delivery, support a growing team and take AI capabilities from experimentation into production.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of LLM-powered features, AI agents and automated workflows.

• Set technical direction while remaining hands-on with architecture, coding and delivery.

• Mentor engineers, review technical work and establish strong development practices.

• Build evaluation processes to improve agent accuracy, reliability and task completion.

• Optimise inference performance, latency and cost.

• Work closely with product and engineering teams to prioritise work and ship useful AI capabilities.

Requirements

• Strong experience delivering machine learning or AI systems into production.

• Hands-on experience building agentic AI products, including tool calling and workflow orchestration.

• Experience leading engineers and taking responsibility for technical delivery.

• Strong Python skills and practical experience with LLM APIs, retrieval and evaluation.

• Ability to make architectural decisions and balance experimentation with production requirements.

• Comfortable working at startup pace with ownership of both team delivery and implementation.

The Opportunity

• Help shape the technical direction of an early AI team.

• Lead the delivery of core capabilities across a portfolio of agentic products.

• Fully remote within the US, with cash compensation and equity.