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ZS · 4 months ago

Ai Engineering Lead

Chicago, IL

Full-time

Hybrid

Senior Level, Lead/Staff

6+ years exp

ZS is a management consulting and technology firm focused on improving life through data, science, and technology. They are seeking a hands-on Engineering Lead to guide a cross-functional team in delivering large-scale, data-intensive Generative AI-powered applications, while ensuring alignment with business goals and Agile processes.

ConsultingManagement ConsultingMarketing

No H1B

Responsibilities

Own end‑to‑end architecture for Gen AI products—retrieval‑augmented generation, agent orchestration, guardrails, and responsible‑AI instrumentation

Make build‑vs‑buy decisions and select frameworks, libraries, and SDKs (LangGraph, DSPy, etc.)

Design event‑driven, microservices‑based systems (Python + FastAPI, Node/TypeScript services) deployed to AWS/Azure/GCP

Champion DevSecOps: IaC (Terraform), CI/CD (GitHub Actions / Azure DevOps), container orchestration (Kubernetes, EKS/AKS/GKE), observability (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry)

Remain 50-60 % hands‑on—writing clean, test‑driven code, reviewing MR/PRs, and tackling critical path items

Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 3-5 engineers; set clear goals, provide regular feedback, and foster a culture of psychological safety and continuous learning

Translate OKRs and product roadmaps into quarterly technical plans and sprint‑level deliverables

Facilitate Agile ceremonies (backlog refinement, sprint planning, demos, retros) and drive empirical, data‑driven decision making

Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Data Scientists to shape user‑centric features and measurable success criteria

Evangelize engineering excellence—secure coding, performance optimization, automated testing, privacy & compliance (HIPAA, GDPR)

Qualification

Generative AI applicationsCloud-native systemsPythonDevOps toolchainsTypeScript/JavaScriptAgile/ScrumMicroservices architectureUX design appreciationTeam leadershipCommunication skills

Required

6+ years of professional software development, including 3+ years leading engineering teams

Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience)

Expert-level Python and solid TypeScript/JavaScript; knowledge of Rust/Go preferred; deep knowledge of REST & gRPC APIs, WebSockets, and JWT/OAuth2 identity flows (Azure AD preferred)

Production experience with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI) and vector stores (pgvector, Qdrant) at scale

Proven success deploying cloud-native systems on AWS/Azure/GCP—networking, IAM, autoscaling, managed databases (RDS/Redshift/), and serverless

Demonstrated mastery of modern DevOps toolchains: Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Argo CD, or similar

Strong front-end instincts (React/Next.js, Tailwind CSS) and appreciation for well-designed UX

Deep familiarity with Agile/Scrum, CI/CD, trunk-based development, and trunk-based release strategies (feature flags, blue-green, canary)

Excellent verbal and written communication; able to convey complex technical ideas to engineers, PMs, and executive stakeholders alike