Principal Enterprise AI Architect & Lead Engineer

Elios AI; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation and benefits

Job summary

Elios AI in Chicago seeks a leader to set technical direction across enterprise AI engagements: architect clients' systems for scale, reliability, and cost efficiency, while remaining a builder and hands-on contributor.

You'll navigate production environments with high stakes, advise executives on AI strategy, mentor engineers, and define standards for evals, reliability, and responsible AI use.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of production software engineering with 3+ years on LLM-powered systems.
• Experience architecting and shipping production AI products with measurable scale.
• Consulting or enterprise delivery background with executive-level communication.
• Full-stack depth across Python, TypeScript, React, and modern backend frameworks.
• Hands-on leadership across distributed teams while staying actively involved.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture across engagements: orchestrator-worker patterns, MCP integrations, hybrid RAG systems, and LLM platforms for scale.
• Advise executive stakeholders on AI strategy and translate it into shippable systems.
• Set technical bar across teams: evals, reliability, cost, and responsible AI tool use.
• Unblock the hardest problems hands-on; act as player-coach at the highest technical level.
• Mentor senior and lead engineers across distributed teams.
• Stay current with what shipped this month and avoid dated course material.

Skills

LLM-powered systems

Executive-level communication

Distributed leadership

Python

TypeScript

React

Systems architecture

Agentic coding tools

Tools

Agentic coding tools

Job description

Elios AI in Chicago seeks a leader to set technical direction across enterprise AI engagements: architect clients' systems for scale, reliability, and cost efficiency, while remaining a builder and hands-on contributor.

You'll navigate production environments with high stakes, advise executives on AI strategy, mentor engineers, and define standards for evals, reliability, and responsible AI use.