Lead AI Engineer

About the role

Job Summary

Our client is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to drive the development and evolution of enterprise AI capabilities. This highly visible role blends technical leadership and hands-on expertise to deliver scalable, production-grade AI solutions, including agentic AI, RAG, and intelligent automation technologies that create business value and accelerate digital transformation.

Key Details

Work Arrangement: Hybrid, three days per week onsite, Monday or Friday mandatory

Strong potential for conversion based on performance and business need

Core Responsibilities

Design, build, deploy, and support enterprise-scale AI solutions in production environments

Develop agentic workflows, orchestration pipelines, tool integrations, and autonomous AI capabilities

Build and evolve RAG and agent-based architectures that deliver measurable business value

Create and maintain evaluation frameworks to improve AI quality, groundedness, reliability, and performance

Implement AI observability, tracing, monitoring, and operational best practices

Develop automated testing, validation, and regression processes for AI systems

Integrate AI solutions with enterprise applications, APIs, and data platforms

Design reusable frameworks, patterns, and components to increase scalability and engineering efficiency

Establish and promote engineering best practices through code reviews and technical mentorship

Research, evaluate, and adopt emerging AI technologies where appropriate

Partner with business stakeholders, architects, and engineers to translate business requirements into innovative AI solutions

Provide technical leadership and guidance on AI platform strategy and architecture decisions

Required Skills/Experience (Must-Haves)

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

5+ years of software engineering experience

Proven track record delivering enterprise-grade software solutions in production environments

Experience building and delivering production-grade agentic AI systems

Strong Python development experience combined with AI platform engineering expertise

Experience designing, deploying, operating, monitoring, and evaluating production AI systems

Hands-on experience implementing agentic AI workflows and autonomous systems

Experience designing and implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions

Experience with Databricks

Experience with LangGraph or similar agent orchestration frameworks

Experience building AI workflows utilizing tools, APIs, and external systems

Experience implementing AI evaluation frameworks and quality measurement methodologies

Experience with AI observability, tracing, and monitoring solutions

Strong understanding of agent architecture patterns, prompt engineering, and LLM evaluation techniques

Experience with AWS in production environments

Experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs

Experience utilizing Git, CI/CD pipelines, and modern software engineering practices

Knowledge of secure coding principles and responsible AI practices

Experience working within Agile development environments

Preferred Skills/Experience (Nice-to-Haves)

Experience with AgentBricks

Experience with Microsoft Copilot extensibility and agent development

Experience with LangChain and related AI frameworks

Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations

Experience with vector databases and semantic search technologies

Experience with AWS Bedrock

Experience with OpenTelemetry, LangSmith, Grafana, MLflow, DeepEval, or similar tooling

Experience deploying and managing multi-agent systems

Experience with Terraform

AWS, Databricks, Microsoft, or AI-related certifications

Demonstrated experience mentoring teammates and contributing to collaborative engineering environments

Key Competencies & Behaviors

Business Outcome Focused

Scalable Innovation Balance

Ownership & Accountability

Holistic Systems Thinking

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Team-Oriented Mentor

Work Environment

Employment Type: Contract-to-Hire

Location: St. Louis, MO

Work Arrangement: Hybrid

Onsite Requirement: Three days per week in office

Scheduling Requirement: One of the onsite days must be either Monday or Friday

Interview Process: Initial virtual interview followed by an onsite interview

Conversion Goal: The organization intends to convert the right candidate based on performance, culture fit, and business needs

Compensation & Benefits

Pay Range: The approximate pay range for this position is between $63.00 and $90.00. Please note that the pay range provided is a good faith estimate. Final compensation may vary based on factors including but not limited to background, knowledge, skills, and location. We comply with local wage minimums.

Medical, Dental, & Vision Insurance Plans

Employee-Owned Profit Sharing (ESOP)

401K offered

About KellyMitchell

At KellyMitchell, our culture is world class. We’re movers and shakers! We don’t mind a bit of friendly competition, and we reward hard work with unlimited potential for growth. This is an exciting opportunity to join a company known for innovative solutions and unsurpassed customer service. We're passionate about helping companies solve their biggest IT staffing & project solutions challenges. As an employee-owned, women-led organization serving Fortune 500 companies nationwide, we deliver expert service at a moment's notice.

Marketing Disclosure

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