Lead Frontier AI Systems Engineer

Phase2 Technology

McLean (VA)

On-site

USD 128,700 - 292,000

Full time

14 days+

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Job summary

The Lead Engineer at Frontier Research is a senior technical builder who drives the architectural rigor and engineering execution behind Frontier Research prototypes and integrations. This role translates frontier concepts into working systems, ensuring technical excellence across prototypes and serving as the lab's senior hands‑on engineering authority.

If you are passionate about building distributed AI systems, architecting agentic applications, and transforming cutting‑edge research into

Qualifications

5+ years of deep technical engineering experience.
Experience designing and building advanced AI systems, including managing them.
Experience developing AI prototypes, products, or high‑visibility technical demonstrations.
Experience leading technical exchanges with commercial partners and executive stakeholders.
Experience translating research into scalable, revenue‑generating solutions.
Ability to translate prototype learnings into reusable frameworks and reference architectures.

Responsibilities

Evaluate emerging advancements across hyperscalers, labs, academia, and venture-backed companies.
Conduct hands‑on assessments, benchmarks, and proofs‑of‑concepts to validate applicability and performance.
Own the technical delivery of end‑to‑end AI systems spanning infrastructure, frontier LLMs, agentic and multi‑agent applications and physical AI pipelines.
Deliver working systems—not slideware.
Provide day‑to‑day technical leadership to engineers and researchers.
Conduct design reviews and guide architectural decisions to raise the overall technical bar.