{"id":4031802,"url":"https://alion.io/job/scrums-com-lead-ai-engineer","title":"Lead AI Engineer","company":{"id":57427,"name":"Scrums.com","domain":"scrums.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/scrums-com","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"services","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Schema","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":39,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0.026,"time_to_fill_p50_days":155,"computed_at":"2026-11-10T06:52:35Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"contractor","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Johannesburg, South Africa"],"countries":["ZA"],"hiring_countries":["ZA"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":6,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Azure DevOps","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"Grafana","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"Text-to-Speech","optional":false},{"name":"vLLM","optional":false},{"name":"Voice Agents","optional":false},{"name":"WhatsApp","optional":false},{"name":"Whisper","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-10","last_verified_at":"2026-11-10T18:52:58Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":4,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":4},"description":"Scrums.com is looking for a Lead AI Engineer, Voice AI and LLM Systems to help shape their client’s next-generation voice and LLM platform for contact centre and collections operations.This is a hands-on leadership position. You’ll help lead a small team while owning live voice agents and speech pipelines that real customers use at high call volumes. You’ll take systems that already work in production and scale them to new clients, languages and channels, including email and WhatsApp. You’ll work directly with the Head of AI on architecture and priorities, with real influence over how the platform grows. It suits a high-agency engineer who spots what needs doing, takes ownership and ships it without waiting to be told.The position is full time and onsite in Sandton, Johannesburg.\nResponsibilities\nBuild and improve real-time voice agents, including prompts, tool calling, webhooks and telephony integration.\nOwn the speech and LLM pipelines: transcription, diarization, voice activity detection (VAD) and LLM-based call scoring.\nBuild and maintain evaluation suites, including LLM-as-judge and regression tests running in CI.\nDrive latency, reliability and cost, including GPU and LLM spend, failure handling and observability.\nShip production Python services on Azure (Functions, Kubernetes, queues and SQL).\nHelp build new channels: email and WhatsApp agents, post-call summaries and outcome scoring.\nWork with the Head of AI on architecture, priorities and production risk.\nMentor and review other engineers while staying hands-on.\nExperience and education\n6+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 2 years building LLM or speech AI systems in production.\nA track record of shipping AI products that real users and businesses depend on, not just prototypes.\nExperience leading or mentoring engineers while remaining hands-on.\nStrong Python, with hands-on experience of LLM platforms and serving (Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, vLLM).\nExperience with speech tooling: speech-to-text, text-to-speech, Whisper, diarization and VAD.\nExperience running services on Azure, with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD (Azure DevOps) and observability (Application Insights, Grafana).\nAdvantageous: contact centre, collections, fintech or other regulated environments.\nPreferred: a degree in Computer Science, Engineering or similar, although a proven production track record matters more.","description_format":"text","description_chars":2394,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":6,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":true},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"South Africa","iso":"ZA","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["IT Outsourcing & Dedicated Teams","Mobile App Development Services","Custom Software Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-10T18:52:58Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":4,"expected_fill_days":155,"reasons":["conf:2","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-10T21:01:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/scrums-com-lead-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/scrums-com-lead-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-10T21:01:30Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":14214,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-11T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":57427},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=57427"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fscrums-com-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fscrums-com-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fscrums-com-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/scrums-com-lead-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fscrums-com-lead-ai-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":4031802}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"scrums.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":4031802},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}