Engineering Lead - Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
First seen by Alion on Sep 22, 2026.
Role Overview:
- Design and build AI solutions across a range of business problems, choosing the right approach for each: document and image extraction or classification, predictive models, workflow automation, LLM-based agents and more.
- Apply AI engineering best practices across every project: prompt design, retrieval strategies, evaluation frameworks, regression testing and version control for models and prompts.
- Set and enforce model governance standards: approval workflows, risk and bias assessment, and documentation for every model promoted to production.
- Build observability into every AI system: logging, tracing and monitoring for inputs, outputs, latency and failure modes, so issues surface before they reach the business.
- Own token economics and compute cost across LLM-based and other AI systems: track cost per request, choose the right model size for each task, and balance accuracy against spend.
- Build and maintain a dashboard that tracks the metrics that matter, such as accuracy, latency, cost, throughput, drift and error rate, across every AI system in production.
- Evaluate and select the right AI approach for each problem, whether that is an LLM, a classical machine learning model, computer vision or a mix, based on what the problem actually needs rather than what is fashionable.
- Mentor engineers on AI engineering practices, and build a shared standard for how the team designs, tests and ships AI systems.
- Explain what an AI system can and cannot do, in plain terms, to non-technical stakeholders and leadership, so expectations stay realistic.
- Track new AI and machine learning techniques, and test them against real business needs rather than adopting them for their own sake.
What You Bring:
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years focused on applied AI or machine learning in production.
- Hands-on experience building and deploying a range of AI solutions, such as document or image extraction and classification, predictive models, recommendation systems, or LLM-based agents and assistants.
- Strong programming skills in Python or a comparable language, and fluency with standard AI and ML tooling: model frameworks, orchestration frameworks and vector databases.
- Experience building observability into AI systems: logging, tracing, monitoring and alerting for model behavior in production.
- Experience with model governance: approval workflows, risk and bias assessment, and documentation standards for models moving into production.
- Working knowledge of token economics and compute cost management for AI systems at scale.
- Experience building dashboards or metrics systems that track model and system performance over time.
- A track record of leading or mentoring engineers and setting technical direction, not only contributing as an individual.
- Strong business acumen: you translate an AI capability into a concrete business outcome, and you know when a simpler, non-AI solution is the right call.
- Clear communication skills.
- You explain technical trade-offs to engineers and non-technical stakeholders alike, without losing precision.
Nice to Have:
- Experience with document or image classification and extraction, as one of several AI domains you have worked in.
- Experience with a dashboarding tool such as Power BI, Tableau or Grafana, used for tracking model and system metrics.
- Familiarity with prompt versioning or evaluation frameworks used for regression testing model outputs.
- Exposure to a data-intensive industry, such as real estate, financial services or health care.
Skills
Python, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Computer Vision, Tableau, Power BI, Grafana, LLM