Lead AI Engineer

Next Step Systems - National IT Recruiting Firm

Lead AI Engineer developing production AI systems to power insurance workflow automation. Collaborating with global engineering teams and driving AI system design and delivery.

Posted 7/3/2026full-timeRemote • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $160,000 - $225,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Distributed Systems

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Lead the design and development of production AI systems powering insurance workflow automation.
Architect AI orchestration layers connecting LLMs, backend services, and business workflows.
Own end-to-end AI system design, including inference pipelines, routing, caching, and fallback strategies.
Drive engineering decisions around latency, reliability, cost, and scalability of AI services.
Lead implementation of Observability Systems (logging, monitoring, tracing, alerting).
Review and guide backend AI implementation across engineering teams.
Collaborate with product, backend, DevOps, and operations teams to ship end-to-end AI features.
Debug complex production issues across distributed AI systems and lead root-cause analysis.
Define engineering standards and best practices for AI system development.
Mentor engineers and elevate technical execution quality across teams.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Strong backend or AI engineering experience in production environments.
Experience building or scaling AI systems (LLMs, embeddings, recommendation systems, or automation workflows).
Strong system design skills with experience in distributed systems.
Experience with production inference pipelines and AI orchestration.
Strong debugging ability in high-scale, latency-sensitive environments.
Experience with observability, monitoring, and incident response.
Proven ability to lead technical execution in cross-functional teams.
Strong ownership mindset and ability to drive projects end-to-end.
Comfortable working in fast-paced, globally distributed teams.

Benefits

Comp & perks

medical insurance
Dental
Vision
Savings Plan Options
PTO

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

AI EngineeringProduction Inference PipelinesAI OrchestrationLatency OptimizationScalabilitySystem DesignAutomation WorkflowsRecommendation SystemsEmbeddingsRoot-Cause Analysis

Soft Skills

Ownership MindsetCollaborationMentoringProblem-SolvingCommunication