Lead Engineer - Data Engg & AI

We are seeking a Lead AI Engineer to own the end-to-end technical delivery of an enterprise data and AI platform. This is a hands-on leadership role, onshore and client-facing, responsible for the platform's cloud data architecture, machine-learning and AI pipelines, and CI/CD, while directing an onshore/offshore engineering team and serving as the primary technical point of contact for stakeholders. The successful candidate combines deep data-engineering expertise with applied AI/ML and the delivery ownership needed to take features from requirements through production. Key Responsibilities • Own end-to-end delivery of the data and AI platform across ingestion, curation, and consumption layers, including the analytics and machine-learning tiers. • Design and build cloud data engineering assets: stored procedures, orchestrated pipelines/DAGs, dimensional and canonical data models, transformation views, and idempotent, re-runnable ingestion. • Architect, develop, and productionize the AI/ML layer from feature engineering through training, scoring, deployment, and monitoring. • Build and operationalize a portfolio of models spanning supervised, unsupervised, and deep-learning approaches, and integrate model outputs back into downstream consumption surfaces. • Establish MLOps practices: feature stores, experiment tracking, model registry and versioning, automated retraining, and production model monitoring for drift and performance. • Deliver model explainability and transparency to support trust, auditability, and stakeholder confidence. • Evaluate and apply generative AI / large language models where they add value (e.g., retrieval-augmented workflows, summarization, or assisted analytics). • Manage the full CI/CD lifecycle: Git branching strategy, pull-request reviews, environment promotion, and controlled production deployments with approval gates. • Lead and mentor a distributed onshore/offshore team; set engineering standards, review code, and ensure consistent delivery quality. • Act as the technical liaison to stakeholders and SMEs; run working sessions, drive design and methodology decisions to closure, and manage delivery governance and reporting. • Own technical documentation and delivery artifacts, and support UAT, cutover, and production readiness. AI/ML Focus Areas • Supervised learning: classification and ranking models (e.g., gradient-boosted trees such as XGBoost/LightGBM) trained on labeled outcomes to prioritize and score records. • Unsupervised learning: anomaly and outlier detection (e.g., Isolation Forest), clustering, and entity-level behavioral profiling (e.g., autoencoders/reconstruction-error methods). • Deep learning: neural architectures for representation learning, embeddings, and sequence/temporal modeling where appropriate. • Generative AI / LLMs: prompt design, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings-based search, and evaluation of LLM outputs for enterprise use cases. • Explainability & responsible AI: feature attribution (e.g., SHAP), model transparency, bias/fairness checks, and audit-ready documentation. • MLOps & scaling: in-warehouse/native ML execution (e.g., Snowpark ML), feature stores, model registries, automated pipelines, and monitoring for drift and degradation. Required Skills & Experience • 8+ years in data engineering and applied machine learning, with 3+ years in a technical lead or delivery-lead capacity. • Expert-level cloud data platform experience (Snowflake strongly preferred): stored procedures, tasks/streams, scripting, performance tuning, and warehouse/role/schema design. • Strong SQL and dimensional/data-warehouse modeling (medallion architecture, Kimball). • Proven track record building and deploying ML models to production across supervised, unsupervised, and deep-learning techniques, including model explainability. • Hands-on experience with modern ML tooling and MLOps (feature engineering, training pipelines, model registry, monitoring); Snowpark ML or equivalent strongly preferred. • Working knowledge of generative AI / LLM frameworks and their practical application in enterprise settings. • Advanced Python for data and ML workflows and deployment scripting. • Git and CI/CD (e.g., Azure DevOps), including PR-based workflows and multi-environment (DEV/PROD) promotion with approval gates. • Demonstrated ability to lead distributed teams and interface directly with business and technical stakeholders. • Excellent written and verbal communication; comfortable owning client-facing delivery. Preferred / Nice-to-Have • Experience with data-quality frameworks and automated validation. • Dashboarding and lightweight app development (e.g., Streamlit) for analytics delivery. • Familiarity with project and collaboration tooling (Jira, Confluence). • Exposure to regulated or compliance-driven data environments. Education Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent professional experience).