Lead Python AI Engineer: Scalable LLM-Backends

Salt; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Salt is seeking a Lead Python AI Engineer to design scalable, AI-powered backend services, APIs, and agentic workflows. You will bridge backend engineering with AI tech, integrating LLMs, vector databases, and external tools into production-grade systems.

The ideal candidate has 7+ years in backend, strong Python and distributed systems, and hands-on AI SDK experience. You will own API contracts, ensure security, and collaborate across teams to deliver robust AI solutions.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience, with strong Python, microservices and distributed systems expertise.
• Experience designing and developing scalable, cloud-native APIs and backend services.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Docker, ECS/EKS, and RESTful APIs.
• 1-2+ years of production experience integrating AI SDKs (OpenAI, Anthropic/Claude, AWS Bedrock).
• Practical experience with agentic AI frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex).
• Experience building and optimizing RAG pipelines, vector databases, embeddings, and retrieval systems.
• Familiarity with vector search tech like Amazon Kendra or OpenSearch.
• Understanding AI observability and evaluation tools (LangSmith, Langfuse, Arize).
• Strong knowledge of secure coding practices, authentication, authorization and API security.
• Ability to design reliable, maintainable, production-grade AI applications.
• Nice to have React and TypeScript experience.
• Experience deploying and scaling apps within AWS EKS environments.
• Familiarity with MCP and agent interoperability.
• Understanding IAM and CIAM.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend API services and LLM orchestration layers.
• Own API contracts, service reliability, performance, and graceful failure handling.
• Build and optimize RAG pipelines with document ingestion, embeddings, and retrieval strategies.
• Develop reusable agentic workflows using LangChain, LangGraph, and LlamaIndex.
• Integrate LLMs with internal systems, vector databases, and external tools.
• Implement AI evaluation, observability, fallback mechanisms, and cost optimization.
• Contribute to architecture, standards, and best practices across teams.
• Collaborate with frontend, data engineering and infrastructure teams to deliver scalable AI solutions.

Skills

Python

Backend engineering

Microservices

Distributed systems

LLM orchestration

RAG pipelines

LangChain

LangGraph

LlamaIndex

Vector databases

Embeddings

Retrieval systems

AWS

Docker

RESTful APIs

AI observability tools

LangSmith

Langfuse

Arize

Security / API security

IAM / CIAM

React

TypeScript

Java

Node.js

Go

MCP

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes / EKS

OpenAI

Anthropic/Claude

AWS Bedrock

Job description

Salt is seeking a Lead Python AI Engineer to design scalable, AI-powered backend services, APIs, and agentic workflows. You will bridge backend engineering with AI tech, integrating LLMs, vector databases, and external tools into production-grade systems.

The ideal candidate has 7+ years in backend, strong Python and distributed systems, and hands-on AI SDK experience. You will own API contracts, ensure security, and collaborate across teams to deliver robust AI solutions.