84.51˚ · 4 hours ago
Lead Software Engineer (P865)
Chicago, IL
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$121K/yr - $201K/yr
7+ years exp84.51° is a retail data science, insights and media company. As a Technical Lead Software Engineer - AI Platform & APIs, you will lead a new AI engineering team responsible for building services and platform capabilities that power AI experiences across the company.
Management Consulting
Hiring Manager
Sarah Small-Sadler
Responsibilities
Lead by example with high-quality code in Python and related backend technologies, setting standards for testing, observability, and performance
Build and maintain FastAPI services, background workers, and integration components that connect AI models and data pipelines to downstream applications
Work with data engineers to design efficient data access and transformation patterns between Databricks, Snowflake, and AI services
Collaborate with front end engineers (React) to ensure APIs are ergonomic, well-documented, and optimized for UX and performance
Lead the technical direction for AI-enabling services and platforms, with a primary focus on Python/FastAPI and Azure
Design and evolve API contracts (OAS 3.0) that expose AI/ML capabilities such as retrieval, scoring, ranking, and agentic workflows to multiple product teams
Work with Tech Lead defining reference architectures and patterns for integrating models, data, and orchestration with our AI platform (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, model registries, feature/embedding stores)
Drive decisions around scalability, resiliency, and security ensuring the solutions are production-ready and cloud-native
Partner with data scientists and AI/ML engineers to move models from experimentation into robust, observable production services
Define deployment patterns (batch vs real-time), model integration approaches, and evaluation hooks that support continuous improvement of AI systems
Implement observability for AI services using Datadog (metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerts) and drive SLOs for latency, reliability, and correctness
Contribute to AIOps/MLOps practices such as CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, canary/blue-green deployments, and rollback strategies for AI-powered features
Provide day-to-day technical guidance and coaching for a distributed team of engineers (AI/ML, data, cloud, software), including offshore collaborators
Collaborate with the Technical Product Manager to refine roadmap, backlog, and success metrics, balancing delivery with architectural runway and technical debt
Help shape and enforce engineering standards across the team: code review practices, design documentation, runbooks, and incident response
Model strong partnership behaviors with product, data science, and business stakeholders, translating platform capabilities into clear value for end users
Lead and participate in Scrum ceremonies (backlog refinement, sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives) to drive predictable, high-quality delivery
Ensure that work is decomposed into incremental, testable slices and that the team maintains a healthy balance of feature work, reliability, and platform investment
Foster a culture of learning, experimentation, and continuous improvement, with particular focus on emerging AI and platform engineering practices
Qualification
Required
7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 3+ years in a senior or lead capacity
Strong back-end engineering expertise with Python and modern API frameworks (FastAPI preferred, or equivalent experience with Flask/Django and willingness to adopt FastAPI)
Demonstrated experience designing, building, and operating cloud-native services on a major cloud provider; Azure experience strongly preferred
Hands-on experience integrating machine learning or AI systems into production (e.g., model endpoints, scoring APIs, feature/embedding stores, recommendation/ranking services)
Solid understanding of data platforms and pipelines, including practical experience working with tools like Databricks, Snowflake, or similar technologies
Experience with observability and operational tooling (Datadog or similar) and familiarity with defining/monitoring SLOs and handling incident response
Proven track record leading or mentoring engineers, influencing architecture, and raising the bar on engineering practices in a cross-functional environment
Preferred
Exposure to front end technologies such as React, and experience collaborating closely with UI teams to design API contracts and integration patterns
Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes/AKS) and infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, Bicep, or similar)
Background in platform engineering, internal developer platforms, or building shared services used by multiple product teams
Familiarity with GenAI, LLMs, agent frameworks, or retrieval-augmented generation patterns in production systems
Benefits
Health: Medical: with competitive plan designs and support for self-care, wellness and mental health.
Dental: with in-network and out-of-network benefit.
Vision: with in-network and out-of-network benefit.
Wealth: 401(k) with Roth option and matching contribution.
Health Savings Account with matching contribution (requires participation in qualifying medical plan).
AD&D and supplemental insurance options to help ensure additional protection for you.
Happiness: Paid time off with flexibility to meet your life needs, including 5 weeks of vacation time, 7 health and wellness days, 3 floating holidays, as well as 6 company-paid holidays per year.
Paid leave for maternity, paternity and family care instances.
Company
84.51˚
84.51° helps companies create sustainable growth by putting the customer at the center of everything.
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
84.51˚ has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (18)
2024 (23)
2023 (29)
2022 (39)
2021 (26)
2020 (17)
Funding
Current Stage
Late StageLeadership Team
Mario DiMercurio
Director, Product - Platform Components
Company data provided by crunchbase