{"id":1450765,"url":"https://alion.io/job/simplify-hr-proprietary-limited-lead-ai-engineer","title":"Lead AI Engineer","company":{"id":1891733,"name":"Simplify HR","domain":"simplify.hr","url":"https://alion.io/company/simplify-hr","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":null,"truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":394,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":33,"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["South Africa"],"countries":["ZA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":31000,"max_usd":75000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":1119},"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Claude Code","optional":false},{"name":"Cursor","optional":false},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":false},{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":true},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":true},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":true},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-09T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-09","last_verified_at":"2026-09-29T13:23:43Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":null,"days_open":36,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":36},"description":"A leading South African packaging manufacturer that specializes in producing corrugated packaging and Single Face Kraft (SFK) products is seeking a Lead AI Engineer who will be the technical owner of an internally built agentic system that currently runs the company's planning cycle end-to-end.\nResponsibilities:\nProduction Governance: Own existing agentic MRP/planning systems; establish source control, managed environments, clear documentation, and formal deployment pipelines.\n\nRisk & Fallback Management: Eliminate single points of failure (technical and operational). Maintain tested rollbacks, kill-switches, and documented manual fallback plans.\n\nBounded Autonomy & Safety: Program hard limits on agent scope/financial values, enforce human-in-the-loop approval gates for irreversible actions, and ensure loud failures over silent errors.\n\nEval Harnesses: Build and run historical evaluation test suites against all prompt, code, or model updates prior to deployment.\n\nStaged Releases: Enforce a strict rollout pathway (Shadow Running $rightarrow$Pilot $rightarrow$Canary $rightarrow$Earned Autonomy).\n\nObservability & Auditing: Implement complete telemetry (inputs, reasoning logs, actions) and queryable audit trails that satisfy financial and governance standards.\n\nProcess Discovery: Engage directly with factory floor and business operations to understand actual workflows before designing automation.\n\nEnd-to-End Delivery: Scope, architect, and build scalable systems across planning, logistics, procurement, and finance-recommending \"go/no-go\" based on pilot metrics.\n\nCommercial Controls: Ensure financial actions adhere to CFO/external audit requirements (segregation of duties, approval limits).\n\nTooling & AI-Assisted Dev: Leverage modern AI dev tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) as primary workflows with rigorous code review and testing standards.\n\nVendor & Cost Management: Direct model selection, transaction cost optimization, data residency, and vendor lock-in prevention.\n\nEnablement & Reporting: Provide runbooks and training for business users; report directly to executive leadership on progress, risk, and technical debt.\n\nMinimum Requirements:\nProduction Release Discipline: Proven track record of owning commercial software running in live production (including staging, canary rollouts, incident handling, and rollbacks). Prototypes or internal tools only will not be shortlisted.\n\nEnd-to-End System Shipping: Demonstrable history of delivering full-lifecycle software solutions, including error handling, monitoring, and handover.\n\nEngineering Background: Minimum 8+ years in software engineering, with 3+ years in a Senior, Lead, or Principal role. Strong software engineering fundamentals take precedence over pure ML research.\n\nAI-Assisted Workflows: High fluency with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent), assessed via live practical evaluation.\n\nDesirable Experience\nPractical experience building with LLMs and agentic workflows (prompt engineering, tool use, evaluation frameworks, handling non-determinism).\n\nFamiliarity with ERP, MRP, or manufacturing supply chain environments.\n\nWillingness to master corrugated packaging and manufacturing process nuances.\n\nBenefits:\nCompetitive salary based on experience (salary can potentially be more based on experience/skills)\nIF you meet the above requirements and want to make a career-changing move, apply today by emailing your CV to ","description_format":"text","description_chars":3480,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Professional Services","Human Resources","Recruiting Software & ATS"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-29T07:45:55Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":12,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":0.4,"p_active":0.542,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":36,"expected_fill_days":33,"reasons":["conf:376","stale_co","velocity","win:tail","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/simplify-hr-proprietary-limited-lead-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/simplify-hr-proprietary-limited-lead-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-15T19:30:49Z","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":29609,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-16T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"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":1891733},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1891733"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsimplify-hr-proprietary-limited-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"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%2Fsimplify-hr-proprietary-limited-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"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%2Fsimplify-hr-proprietary-limited-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/simplify-hr-proprietary-limited-lead-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsimplify-hr-proprietary-limited-lead-ai-engineer"}]}