You will lead the AI engineering team in building GenAI capabilities while maintaining a hands-on role in designing and coding production solutions. You are responsible for setting technical direction, mentoring team members, and ensuring the quality and performance of AI-driven features.
The Mission
AtScale is the semantic layer for modern data and AI. We connect cloud data platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, and Google BigQuery with the business users, BI tools, and AI agents that need consistent, governed, AI-ready analytics. As GenAI moves from demos to production, the semantic layer is what makes an AI answer trustworthy. The AI team is where that work happens, and we're looking for the engineer who will lead it.
The Role We're hiring a Lead AI Engineer to lead the team that builds AtScale's GenAI capabilities. This is a player-coach role: you'll set the technical direction for how large language models and agents work with the semantic layer, plan and deliver the roadmap with your team, and still write production code every week. You'll work closely with product management, the core engine and platform teams, and DevOps to turn AI ideas into features our customers rely on.
The Impact You'll Make
Lead the team. Hire, mentor, and grow a team of AI engineers. Set clear expectations, give timely feedback, and build a culture where quality, ownership, and curiosity are the norm.
Own technical direction. Define the architecture and standards for AtScale's GenAI work including agent and tool-calling patterns, and evaluation.
Plan and deliver. Translate product goals into actionable plans, milestones, and sprint- level work. Scope projects realistically, manage risk and dependencies, and keep stakeholders informed on progress and trade-offs.
Build, hands-on. Design and productionize GenAI solutions using foundation model APIs, and frameworks. Lead by example in design reviews and code reviews.
Raise the bar on quality. Establish how the team evaluates AI output for accuracy, bias, latency, cost, and compliance. Build the measurement and observability that turns model performance into numbers the team can improve.
Collaborate and integrate. Partner with DevOps, product, and software engineering teams to integrate models into the AtScale platform, debug AI-generated responses, and keep production running smoothly.
Represent the work. Communicate the team's direction and results to engineering leadership, product, and customers, and step into technical customer conversations when it helps.
Who You Are
You've led engineers before, with 2+ years as a tech lead or engineering manager of an AI or ML team, and you still love to code.
You have 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 7+ years developing AI algorithms or technologies, and you've shipped GenAI features to production at scale.
You're fluent in Python and the modern GenAI stack: foundation model APIs, retrieval- augmented generation, embeddings, prompt and context engineering, and systematic evaluation.
You're comfortable working with customers to debug their systems, with Docker/Kubernetes and Git/CI/CD experience.
You turn ambiguous goals into plans people can execute, and you communicate clearly, in writing and in person, with engineers, product managers, and executives.
You prefer quality over speed, keep current with AI tooling, and thrive in a fast-paced environment where priorities shift.
You're based in, or can work, Eastern Time hours, overlapping with our core collaboration window of 10 AM to 5 PM ET. Candidates in EST or CST are preferred.
Experience with semantic layers, BI, OLAP, or analytical SQL. You understand how analysts and business users actually query data.
Hands-on work with natural-language-to-query systems, agent frameworks, or the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Familiarity with Scala or the JVM ecosystem, where AtScale's core engine lives.
Experience building LLM evaluation harnesses, red-teaming, or AI governance programs for enterprise customers.
Contributions to open-source AI tooling, or talks and writing on applied GenAI. Why You'll Love It Here
Ownership and autonomy. You'll own the direction of a team, not just a backlog, and you'll have the room to make decisions that matter.
Innovation-focused. We're building at the intersection of semantic layers and AI, and we encourage experimentation and new ideas.
Flexible, remote-friendly culture. We're built on trust and results, not hours at a desk.
The Perks
Competitive salary plus equity.
Unlimited PTO and comprehensive benefits.
The chance to shape the future of a global leader in AI-ready analytics.
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