AI Development Manager

Title: AI Development Manager
Location : Salt Lake City Region (hybrid/onsite)
Target Start Date : ASAP
Type: Contract-to-Hire (will consider direct hire)
Pay Rate : $75.00-$95.00/hr

Overview
Our client, a global leader in advanced autonomous and robotic solutions and creator of the industry's most advanced unmanned command and control solution for vehicle operations, is seeking an experienced AI Development Manager to lead a team of engineers responsible for building scalable systems, tools, and infrastructure that support advanced AI research and production applications. This role combines hands-on technical leadership with team management, guiding architecture decisions, mentoring engineers, and ensuring the successful delivery of reliable, high-performance AI systems.
The ideal candidate will drive execution across complex technical initiatives while maintaining strong engineering standards and fostering a collaborative, high-performing development environment.

• Lead and mentor a team of AI engineers, ML engineers, and software developers.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural guidance for AI systems, model pipelines, and supporting infrastructure.
• Contribute directly to development by designing, implementing, reviewing, and optimizing AI software systems.
• Define architecture for model training pipelines, distributed training environments, and deployment frameworks.
• Balance hands-on development with team leadership, including planning, prioritization, and performance management.
• Coordinate cross-functional initiatives with research, infrastructure, and product teams.
• Establish development roadmaps and execution plans to ensure predictable delivery of AI capabilities.
• Promote engineering best practices in code quality, testing, documentation, and version control.
• Support development and scaling of data pipelines, model training workflows, inference systems, and real-time AI components.
• Track progress, remove blockers, and drive continuous improvement across engineering processes and tools.
• Recruit, onboard, and develop high-performing engineering talent.

• 10+ years of experience supporting highly technical teams in areas such as AI, machine learning, robotics, or advanced software engineering.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field.
• Experience leading or supporting complex AI or ML development initiatives.
• Strong understanding of Agile development practices, particularly in research or R&D environments.
• Ability to translate complex technical work into clear plans, priorities, and deliverables.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and organizational skills.
• Proven ability to manage dependencies, remove blockers, and coordinate cross-team initiatives.
• Experience managing complex technical projects with evolving requirements.
• Comfort working in ambiguous, fast-changing research environments.

• Experience supporting AI research, distributed training systems, or large-scale ML platforms.
• Background in AI infrastructure, model deployment, or real-time AI systems.
• Experience scaling high-performance engineering teams.

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