Technical Lead - Generative AI
First seen by Alion on Sep 24, 2026.
Role : GenAI / AI Engineering
Role Focus : Hands-on technical leadership across GenAI, LLM applications, RAG, AI agents, backend engineering and enterprise cloud architecture.
Experience : 8 - 12+ years overall software engineering experience, including 3+ years of strong hands-on AI/ML, GenAI or related AI engineering experience.
Role Overview :
- Translate client and business problems into practical technical solutions and scalable solution architecture.
- Own the architecture and technical design of AI, GenAI and agentic AI solutions while remaining hands-on with development.
- Move solutions from discovery and prototype through development, production deployment and production support.
- Lead and guide engineers while contributing to coding, debugging, code reviews, performance optimisation and technical problem solving.
- Work closely with clients and internal stakeholders on discovery, technical workshops, architecture decisions, estimates and solution presentations.
Core Experience & Engineering Requirements :
- 8 - 12+ years of overall software engineering experience.
- 3+ years of strong hands-on experience in AI/ML, GenAI or related AI engineering.
- Strong hands-on Python development.
- Strong recent hands-on experience building GenAI/LLM-based applications.
- Strong experience with LLMs, prompt engineering, structured outputs and tool/function calling.
- Strong coding, debugging, troubleshooting and performance optimisation skills.
- Experience owning solution architecture and technical design for enterprise applications.
- Experience taking solutions from discovery/prototype through development and production deployment.
GenAI, LLM & Agentic AI :
- Hands-on experience with RAG, embeddings, vector databases, document processing, chunking, retrieval and reranking.
- Hands-on experience with AI agents and agent orchestration, including multi-step workflows, tool-using agents, memory/state management and human-in-the-loop patterns.
- Experience with LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel or similar frameworks.
- Good understanding of MCP and emerging standards for connecting AI agents with enterprise systems and tools.
- Understanding of secure AI architecture, data protection, prompt/input security, AI guardrails, logging, auditability, monitoring, evaluation, regression testing, scalability and cost management.
Backend, Cloud & Distributed Systems :
- Experience with backend development using FastAPI, Flask, Django or similar frameworks.
- Strong understanding of REST APIs, microservices and distributed application architecture.
- Experience integrating enterprise applications, databases and third-party APIs.
- Hands-on exposure to at least one major cloud platform : Azure, AWS or GCP.
- Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, cloud-native application deployment, API management, logging/monitoring and identity/access management.
- SQL and relational databases; NoSQL databases; vector databases.
- Data ingestion and transformation pipelines; API-based integration; event-driven/asynchronous processing.
- Understanding of enterprise authentication/authorization, data privacy, PII handling and enterprise security requirements.
Technical Leadership & Delivery :
- Experience leading technical teams while continuing to contribute to development.
- Ability to move from Client Problem - Solution Architecture - Technical Design - Team Guidance - Hands-on Coding - Code Review - Deployment - Production Support.
- Break solutions into technical work packages and guide implementation.
- Support estimation, sprint planning and technical task allocation.
- Track technical progress and address dependencies/blockers.
- Mentor team members and improve technical capabilities.
- Review designs and code before higher environments and ensure technical quality throughout the project.
- Work closely with Project Managers, Business Analysts, Solution Architects, QA and DevOps teams.
- Work effectively in Agile delivery environments.
People & Collaboration Skills :
- Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to build trust, align diverse teams and communicate clearly across technical and business audiences.
- Strong mentoring, coaching and conflict-resolution skills, with the ability to give constructive feedback and create a collaborative engineering culture.
Client-Facing & Pre-Sales Responsibilities :
- Participate in client discovery and technical workshops.
- Understand client landscape, integrations, data, security and infrastructure constraints.
- Explain architecture and technical decisions to technical and business stakeholders.
- Present solution architecture and technical options during client reviews.
- Support pre-sales with technical solutioning, estimates, architecture and feasibility assessments.
- Handle technical questions and challenges during client discussions.
Key Responsibilities :
- Understand business requirements and translate them into the right technical solution.
- Own overall architecture and technical design of AI, GenAI and agentic AI solutions.
- Define application architecture, AI/LLM components, APIs, integrations, data flows, security and deployment approach.
- Evaluate technology and model options based on business need, cost, performance, security and scalability.
- Create architecture diagrams, technical design documents, API specifications and implementation guidelines.
- Identify technical risks and drive practical solutions.
- Actively contribute to coding throughout the project.
- Build critical modules, prototypes, reusable components and integrations.
- Develop and integrate LLM applications, RAG pipelines, AI agents and APIs.
- Support complex coding, integration and performance issues.
- Conduct code reviews and ensure good engineering practices.
- Improve code quality, performance, security and maintainability.
- Lead and guide AI/ML engineers, backend developers and other technical team members.
- Take AI solutions beyond prototype into production, including security, governance, evaluation, monitoring, scalability, performance and cost management.
Good-to-Have Skills :
- Experience with Azure AI Foundry, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI or similar enterprise AI platforms.
- Experience with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini or equivalent models.
- Traditional ML/ML engineering knowledge.
- LLM evaluation frameworks; AI guardrails and responsible AI; LLM observability and tracing.
- Model and prompt evaluation.
- Token, latency and cost optimisation.
- Experience building enterprise AI accelerators or reusable AI platforms.
- Experience with multi-agent or agentic AI solutions.
- Experience modernising existing enterprise applications using AI.
- Microsoft Fabric or enterprise data platforms.
- BFSI, financial services or other regulated enterprise environments.
- AI security and responsible AI practices.
- Experience supporting technical proposals, estimations and solution presentations.
- Experience mentoring engineers and building engineering standards or reusable frameworks.
- Git-based development, branching, pull requests and code reviews.
- Experience with API management, secrets/configuration management and production troubleshooting.
Preferred Certifications & Qualifications :
Certifications / Credentials :
- Anthropic Claude certifications, particularly CCAF for architects.
- Microsoft AI-103.
- AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Professional.
Education / Qualification :
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology or a related discipline.
- Equivalent strong hands-on engineering experience may also be considered.
Skills
Python, LLM, LangChain, RAG, Generative AI, Data Science, VectorDB, LLama