AI Software Engineering Lead

Job title: AI Software Engineering Lead

About the Role As Engineering Lead—you will lead and manage a small team of engineers, fostering their growth and ensuring delivery excellence. You will be entrusted with making sure your team is set up for success as they deliver products. This position serves as a subject matter expert for a specific team of Software Engineers. In addition to writing code on complex systems and applications, this position provides direction on project plans, schedules, and methodologies.

What You'll Do

• Lead and mentor six direct reports to drive delivery and growth.
• Drive technical strategy and execution for the CK AI Service, including the design and governance of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows and API expansion.
• Improve delivery velocity, reduce bottlenecks and single points of failure, driving standardization, mentoring, and cross-functional alignment as the platform matures.
• Collaborate with Data Science to shape product road map and feature design forward.
• Write high-quality code and contribute to architecture, code reviews, and governance as needed.

What We're Looking For

• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and grow engineering teams, including performance management and career development.
• Established track record of high-performing, collaborative team environments and reducing knowledge silos.
• Ability to remove blockers, manage priorities, and improve delivery velocity across a team.
• Experience establishing scalable team structures and leadership models to support growth.
• Deep expertise in designing and delivering distributed systems and APIs at scale; microservices architecture, API design, and system integration.
• Proven ability to define and execute technical strategies, balancing short-term delivery with long-term platform sustainability.
• Hands-on experience designing and implementing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows; understanding of LLM integration, embeddings, vector search, retrieval pipelines and ranking strategies.
• Experience building AI-powered APIs and services for production environments; ability to govern and standardize AI patterns, including evaluation, observability, and performance optimization.
• Collaborative mindset and ability to work with Data Science.

Nice to Have

• Experience with CK AI Service or similar AI platforms and retrieval-augmented generation architectures.
• Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation, LLM orchestration, embeddings, and AI governance patterns.
• Experience in scaling AI-enabled platforms and leading AI-driven product development.

Compensation & Benefits

• U.S. National Base Pay Range: $115,400 - $192,300. Geographic differentials may apply; New Jersey range: $136,213 - $217,587.
• This job is eligible for an annual incentive bonus.
• Country-specific benefits are provided; details available for your location.