Senior Director, Software Engineering – AI ML Engineering jobs in United States
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McAfee · 5 hours ago

Senior Director, Software Engineering – AI ML Engineering

McAfee, LLC is a leader in personal security for consumers, focused on protecting people in an online world. They are seeking a hands-on technical leader to architect and deploy on-device small language models for consumer security, while leading a team of engineers and remaining deeply involved in the technical architecture.

Consumer ElectronicsEnterprise SoftwareInformation TechnologyNetwork Security
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H1B Sponsor Likelynote

Responsibilities

Design and deploy small language models optimized for on-device inference (Mac, iOS, Android, Linux)
Lead model optimization efforts including quantization, pruning, distillation, and efficient inference pipelines
Fine-tune models to improve tool selection accuracy and conversational behavior in security-focused workflows
Build evaluation frameworks to measure model efficacy, tool-calling accuracy, conversation quality, and safety in production
Create synthetic data and workflow simulations to train and validate security-relevant conversations
Partner closely with agent orchestration systems to optimize multi-turn dialogue behavior and state handling
Implement cost-optimization strategies such as intelligent on-device vs. cloud routing, prompt caching, batching, and token efficiency
Integrate cloud-based LLMs when deeper reasoning or broader context is required
Build production ML systems that detect threats and protect users directly on-device
Set technical standards and architectural direction for AI/ML across the security platform
Mentor principal engineers and architects while remaining hands-on

Qualification

AI model optimizationPythonML model deploymentPyTorchConversational AI systemsC++RustEvaluation frameworksEdge deployment frameworksMentoringTechnical leadership

Required

10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years focused on ML/AI
Proven experience shipping ML models to production with transferrable skills to deploy these on edge or mobile platforms
Experience with conversational AI systems and tool/function-calling architectures
Strong Python and systems programming skills (C++ or Rust) for performance-critical code
Deep expertise in model optimization (INT4/INT8 quantization, pruning, distillation)
Hands-on experience with PyTorch and at least one edge deployment framework (TensorFlow Lite, CoreML, ONNX Runtime, or llama.cpp)
Experience building evaluation and benchmarking frameworks for ML systems

Preferred

Experience applying ML systems in security, safety, or other adversarial domains
Master's degree in CS, ML, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)

Benefits

Bonus Program
Pension and Retirement Plans
Medical, Dental and Vision Coverage
Paid Time Off
Paid Parental Leave
Support for Community Involvement

Company

McAfee is an online security company that provides virus alerts and analysis on malware, network security threats, and web vulnerabilities.

H1B Sponsorship

McAfee 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 (28)
2024 (24)
2023 (12)
2022 (26)
2021 (46)
2020 (84)

Funding

Current Stage
Public Company
Total Funding
unknown
2022-03-01Private Equity
2022-03-01Debt Financing
2021-11-08Acquired

Leadership Team

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Craig Boundy
Chief Executive Officer
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Steve Grobman
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
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Company data provided by crunchbase