# Lead AI Engineer Source: https://realanalystjobs.com/job/lead-ai-engineer-ulta-beauty-80d586a3 Lead AI Engineer at Ulta Beauty, an on-site role based in Bolingbrook, Illinois, USA. Posted on 20 October 2026, read from Ulta Beauty's own careers page (Jibe), which RealAnalystJobs re-checks daily and removes the role when it closes. Updated 15 November 2026. ## Key facts - Company: [Ulta Beauty](https://realanalystjobs.com/companies/ulta-beauty) - Location: Bolingbrook, Illinois, USA - Work mode: On-site - Posted: Oct 20, 2026 - Employment type: Full time - Source: Ulta Beauty's careers page (Jibe), re-checked daily Skills: [SQL](https://realanalystjobs.com/skills/sql), [Python](https://realanalystjobs.com/skills/python), BigQuery, AWS, Azure ## About this role OVERVIEW Live the experience . From professional empowerment to continual learning opportunities. From ongoing investment in new and emerging technologies to a career of self-determination. At Ulta Beauty, our tech team is critical to our scalability - and is recognized that way. We’ve been defined as a “mature start-up.” A place where interdepartmental exposure, open doors, and genuine collaboration is ubiquitous. Where challenges come fast and furious, requiring agility, mental dexterity, and creativity. Where our passion for better solutions drives us and is core to who we are. We’re engineering for the future of retail, and it’s no-holds-barred. But for those motivated by continual change and ambiguity, by superior leadership, by whip smart colleagues who will press you daily for your very best, you’ll find that virtually nothing’s impossible at Ulta Beauty. NOTICE OF JOB OPPORTUNITY COMPANY: Ulta, Inc. LOCATION: 1000 Remington Blvd., Suite 120, Bolingbrook, IL 60440 TITLE: Lead Artificial Intelligence Engineer HOURS: Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 5:00 pm DUTIES: Direct and oversee the full lifecycle execution of complex AI initiatives, bridging the gap between exploratory data science and production engineering, including formulation and statistical modeling to deployment and scaling. 5.0% Contribute technical leadership to the development and optimization of advanced algorithms for recommendation and decision engines, utilizing techniques such as collaborative filtering, embeddings, clustering, reinforcement learning, and constrained optimization. 5.0% Architect and deploy GenAI solutions: Design pipelines for Large Language Models (LLMs) including fine-tuning, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and prompt engineering for enterprise retail use cases like analytics augmentation and decision support. Co-ownership (with other Engineering Lead peers and Engineering Practice lead) of governance and standards for AI engineering related portions of these technologies. 15.0% Ensure "Enterprise Readiness": Take ownership of the non-functional requirements of AI systems, explicitly optimizing models for low-latency inference, high throughput, data privacy compliance, and cloud cost efficiency. Help enforce adherence of others engineering team members to standards. 10.0% Build production-grade pipelines: Transition code from experimental notebooks to modular, version-controlled software packages. Implement automated training pipelines, CI/CD for ML, and robust monitoring for data drift and model degradation; establish team’s practices for this space. 10.0% Code Quality & Standards: Responsible for defining and enforcing engineering standards within the Enterprise AI team, including unit testing, documentation, peer code reviews, and reproducibility frameworks. 10.0% Translate business needs into technical specs: Partner with business and IT product teams to refine vague use cases into concrete engineering requirements, identifying technical risks early in the project planning process. Represent as a decision maker within the team for AIML engineering topics, and act as a primary point of contact for the Engineering domain within a team. 10.0% Advise on emerging areas of technology and AI; evaluate and recommend AI technologies, frameworks, and tools to maintain cutting edge capabilities. 5.0% Proactively look for opportunities to drive AI innovation, promote and advocate for those capabilities within Agile delivery framework. 5.0% Project Estimation & Planning: Own detailed technical roadmaps, providing accurate time and effort estimates for the Engineering phases of projects. 5.0% Engineering Standards: Promote adherence to statistical best practices and software engineering principles across the engineering team, fostering a culture of technical excellence. 10.0% Communication: Present technical results and architectural decisions to senior stakeholders, effectively communicating the trade-offs between model complexity, performance, and cost. Serve as an escalation point and technical authority for the team. 10.0% REQUIREMENTS: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics or other quantitative field. Seven (7) years in any occupation with experience working in data science, machine learning or AI. Seven (7) years in any occupation with experience working in data science, machine learning or AI must include: Seven (7) years of experience writing production-quality object-oriented code (Python or C++) and working with ML frameworks such as scikit-learn, TensorFlow, or similar, including five (5) years of experience building low-latency or real-time ML systems; Seven (7) years of experience designing, building, and deploying large-scale recommender or decisioning systems, including techniques such as ranking, clustering, and other unsupervised learning methods; Seven (7) years of experience building and deploying production ML systems on cloud platforms (Google Cloud, Azure, or AWS); Six (6) years of experience applying optimization techniques in production environments, including large-scale ML or decisioning systems such as operational research, offer optimization, or revenue maximization; Five (5) years of experience working in the Retail Industry; Five (5) years of experience building scalable, production-grade real-time inference services using Docker, with CI/CD and monitoring; Three (3) years of experience as Sr AI or ML Engineer with demonstrated ability to drive technical direction and own AI tech solutions; Three (3) years of experience designing and developing reinforcement learning models in real-world or production settings; Two (2) years of experience working with large language models (LLMs); Two (2) years of experience building or integrating large-scale batch ML pipelines using cloud-native event-driven systems (e.g., Pub/Sub) and containerized execution (e.g., GKE); Two (2) years of experience developing agentic solutions wi Description from Ulta Beauty's public careers feed, reproduced so you can read the role here. Apply on the company's own site; Real Analyst Jobs never submits anything for you. ## How to apply Open [this role on Real Analyst Jobs](https://realanalystjobs.com/job/lead-ai-engineer-ulta-beauty-80d586a3) and use Apply now there to reach the employer's application. The listing is re-checked against Ulta Beauty's careers page daily and removed when it closes. ## Ulta Beauty 2 open analyst roles on Real Analyst Jobs. [More roles at Ulta Beauty](https://realanalystjobs.com/companies/ulta-beauty) ## More like this ### Other open roles at Ulta Beauty - [Procurement Analyst - Ariba](https://realanalystjobs.com/job/procurement-analyst-ariba-ulta-beauty-b050dcdf), Bolingbrook Illinois, USA (On-site) - [Sr Financial Analyst](https://realanalystjobs.com/job/sr-financial-analyst-ulta-beauty-14ae9608), Bolingbrook Illinois, USA (On-site) - [Data analyst jobs in the USA](https://realanalystjobs.com/jobs/data-analyst-jobs-in-usa) - [Analyst job market report](https://realanalystjobs.com/analyst-job-market) - [What analyst roles pay](https://realanalystjobs.com/blog/data-analyst-salaries) ## Sources and links - [This role on Real Analyst Jobs](https://realanalystjobs.com/job/lead-ai-engineer-ulta-beauty-80d586a3) - [Ulta Beauty on Real Analyst Jobs](https://realanalystjobs.com/companies/ulta-beauty) - [All analyst jobs](https://realanalystjobs.com/jobs)