Lead AI Engineer, Agentic and RAG Systems

EPAM Systems Inc

  • Atlanta, GA
  • 30+ days ago

    Highlights

    We are looking for a seasoned Lead AI Engineer who architects, builds, and operates production GenAI platforms - agentic workflows, RAG pipelines, and LLM-backed services with real users and real SLAs - while leading engineers and setting the technical direction across multiple workstreams. Hands-on production experience with at least one major LLM provider - AWS Bedrock (preferred), OpenAI / Azure OpenAI, or Anthropic - including model selection, routing trade-offs, and multi-provider strategy.

    Numbers & Facts

    LocationAtlanta, GA

    Description

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    Lead AI Engineer, Agentic and RAG Systems

    Remote in Georgia, & 4 others

    AI Engineering

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    We are looking for a seasoned Lead AI Engineer who architects, builds, and operates production GenAI platforms - agentic workflows, RAG pipelines, and LLM-backed services with real users and real SLAs - while leading engineers and setting the technical direction across multiple workstreams.

    This is an engineering leadership role, not a research role. The bar is reliability, latency, cost, observability, and safe deployment at scale, with end-to-end ownership from architecture through on-call, and accountability for the technical quality and delivery of the team. Typical workloads include enterprise knowledge platforms, conversational analytics, agentic automation, and LLM-augmented data products.

    Responsibilities

    • Own the end-to-end architecture of GenAI platforms across multiple services and teams, defining standards, patterns, and reference implementations

    • Lead the design of agent orchestration (graph/state, conditional routing, tool calling, memory, checkpointing) in LangGraph / LangChain or equivalent, and set best practices for the team

    • Architect production RAG end-to-end: chunking, embeddings, vector stores, hybrid retrieval, reranking, caching, and grounded synthesis - and mentor engineers in building it

    • Drive the design and delivery of Python / FastAPI services - async, SSE streaming, session handling, and structured error contracts - establishing service templates and conventions

    • Define the observability and evaluation strategy (MLflow, OpenTelemetry, or equivalent) for accuracy, cost, and regression across the platform

    • Own the deployment platform on Docker + Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE) with CI/CD, test, eval, and canary gates - setting release standards for AI systems

    • Lead LLM cost engineering strategy - model routing, prompt optimization, caching, token accounting, and build-vs-buy decisions at portfolio level

    • Establish GenAI safety & governance practices: hallucination control, prompt-injection defense, PII handling, and HITL where required

    • Partner with data engineering leadership on semantic layers and pipelines (PySpark / SQL where applicable), and align roadmaps across teams

    • Mentor and grow senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and technical coaching; conduct hiring and technical interviews

    • Represent engineering in conversations with clients, product, and executive stakeholders; translate business goals into technical strategy and delivery plans

    Requirements

    • 6+ years in software engineering, with 3+ years shipping production LLM / agentic systems (not POCs or research)

    • 1+ years of experience leading engineers or technical workstreams

    • Proven track record of owning architecture for multi-service GenAI or distributed systems in production

    • Expert-level proficiency in Python and FastAPI (async, REST, SSE)

    • Deep production expertise in LangChain and LangGraph (or equivalent serious production experience with LlamaIndex, AutoGen, or MCP stacks)

    • Strong background in production RAG: embeddings, chunking, and hybrid retrieval with reranking and caching - with the ability to define standards across teams

    • Advanced skills in vector databases such as Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, OpenSearch, or Databricks Vector Search

    • Hands-on production experience with at least one major LLM provider - AWS Bedrock (preferred), OpenAI / Azure OpenAI, or Anthropic - including model selection, routing trade-offs, and multi-provider strategy

    • Strong competency in Kubernetes and Docker in real production environments (EKS/AKS/GKE), including platform-level decisions

    • Deep expertise in cloud engineering on AWS, including cost, security, and scalability trade-offs

    • Solid command of observability and tracing tools (MLflow, LangSmith, OpenTelemetry), evaluation harnesses, and latency/cost ownership at platform scale

    • Experience designing and owning CI/CD for AI systems (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or equivalent) with test/eval gates

    • Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers, leading design reviews, and driving technical decisions across teams

    • Strong written and spoken English (B2+ level); able to lead design discussions, present to senior stakeholders, and influence technical direction with clients and executives

    Nice to have

    • Databricks depth - MLflow (tracking & serving), Vector Search, Unity Catalog / Metric Views, PySpark / SQL

    • Experience with LLM fine-tuning - PEFT, LoRA, QLoRA - and the ability to guide build-vs-fine-tune-vs-prompt decisions

    • Strong understanding of MCP servers and tool integration patterns

    • Expertise in GenAI governance & FinOps - auditability, prompt-injection hardening, PII, and token cost in regulated environments

    • Background in classical ML / DL - NLP, BERT-family, time-series, and CV

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