Machine Learning Team Lead (NLP, LLM)

Description

We’re seeking a Team Lead – Generative AI Engineer to lead a team of engineers in designing, developing, and deploying production-grade AI systems. This role is ideal for someone who is both a strong technical contributor and an experienced people leader—capable of driving architecture decisions, mentoring team members, and delivering innovative AI solutions at scale.

You will be responsible for guiding the end-to-end lifecycle of Generative AI applications, ensuring technical excellence, scalability, and alignment with business needs. This includes working across backend systems, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, and cloud-native deployments.

Key Responsibilities

• Leadership & Team ManagementLead and mentor a team of AI/ML engineers, fostering growth and technical excellence.
• Define and enforce coding standards, architectural patterns, and best practices.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business needs into AI-driven solutions.
• Manage project timelines, technical risks, and team deliverables.
• Generative AI & Prompt EngineeringIntegrate and optimize applications using LLM provider APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.).
• Design prompts with advanced techniques (few-shot, chain-of-thought, chaining, context crafting).
• Implement safeguards (guardrails, structured output validation, injection protection).
• Architecture & Backend DevelopmentBuild scalable backend services in .NET (C#) and Python, working with SQL and APIs.
• Develop and manage RAG pipelines, conversational AI systems, and summarization tools.
• Drive observability: tracing, logging, monitoring for LLM-powered systems.
• Evaluation & OptimizationBenchmark and evaluate LLMs using custom datasets and automated testing.
• Oversee system reliability, performance tuning, caching, and optimization.
• Ensure solutions meet enterprise-grade standards for security and scalability.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience in Machine Learning / AI engineering.
• 1–2+ years hands-on experience in Generative AI application development.
• Proven leadership or team lead experience (mentoring, managing, or leading AI/ML engineers).
• Strong backend engineering skills in Python.
• Solid knowledge of LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.) and prompt engineering techniques.
• Experience with RAG pipelines, AI workflows, and productionizing LLM systems.
• Hands-on with Docker, Kubernetes, REST APIs, and Azure (AKS, ACR, containerized deployments).
• Excellent communication skills (English, written and spoken).

Preferred

• Azure AI ecosystem: OpenAI, PromptFlow, Azure ML, AI Services.
• Familiarity with CosmosDB, KQL, Azure Log Analytics, App Insights.
• Experience with multiple LLM providers (Anthropic, Mistral, Cohere, etc.).
• Prompt caching, compression, and output validation strategies.
• Redis caching for performance optimization.
• Frontend experience with React and Next.js.