We are seeking a
Lead AI Engineer to serve as our organization's foremost technical authority on artificial intelligence strategy, architecture, and adoption. At Veracity, that means shaping how AI is built and scaled across a customer-facing digital insurance platform serving small business owners nationwide - from how we surface coverage recommendations to how we prepare for a world where AI agents increasingly research and purchase insurance on behalf of human customers.
This is not a people management role - it is a systems leadership role. You will act as the connective tissue between engineering, product, and business leadership, making and owning the high-stakes technical decisions: build vs. buy, platform selection, architectural patterns, and AI tooling standards. You will bring structure and discipline to our AI practice while operating with the urgency and adaptability of a fast-moving, independent company.
Key ResponsibilitiesTechnical Strategy & Direction- Define the AI engineering roadmap and architecture standards across the organization
- Lead build vs. buy vs. integrate decision-making for AI systems and platforms - and be accountable for articulating how you arrived at those decisions
- Evaluate emerging tools, frameworks, and models; provide clear, defensible recommendations to leadership
- Serve as the ultimate technical escalation point for complex AI/ML system design challenges
Enterprise Systems & Scaling- Architect AI solutions for our enterprise platform - which has already been substantially rebuilt and requires thoughtful evolution, not ground-up construction
- Design systems for scale, reliability, and cost-efficiency in production environments
- Establish LLMOps practices - evaluation and regression suites for LLM-powered features, cost and quality observability, versioned prompts/configs with staged rollout and rollback, and production guardrails
- Ensure AI systems integrate cleanly with existing product and engineering infrastructure
Cross-Functional Collaboration- Partner closely with Product and Engineering leadership to align AI capabilities with business outcomes
- Receive operational support to help initiate and coordinate cross-functional engagement, allowing you to stay focused on technical leadership and decision-making
- Provide clear guidance on resource allocation - who owns what, who should be engaged, and in what sequence
- Translate complex technical concepts for non-technical audiences, including executives and business stakeholders
- Challenge direction constructively and push back on approaches that compromise long-term system health
AI Coding & Process Transformation- Champion and introduce AI-assisted coding practices and developer tooling across the engineering organization
- Define standards for responsible AI development including guardrails, evaluation frameworks, and security considerations
- Drive continuous improvement in how the organization builds and ships AI-powered features
What This Role Is NotThis is not a people manager role. You will not carry direct reports or be evaluated on team headcount. You may provide technical direction to contributors, but managing people is the exception, not the expectation.
Requirements and QualificationsRequired- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field (or equivalent practical experience)
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with demonstrated mastery designing and shipping production systems where correctness, reliability, and auditability matter
- 2+ years building production LLM/GenAI and agentic systems, plus fluency with AI-assisted coding tooling and the judgment to set org-wide standards, evals, and guardrails for AI-generated code
- Sound judgment about where AI belongs and where it must not - comfortable with probabilistic agents for customer-facing and research tasks, while keeping policy binding, money movement, and compliance flows deterministic, auditable, and human-governed
- Experience making and communicating build vs. buy vs. integrate decisions at an organizational level
- Proficiency in Python and the modern GenAI application stack - agent/orchestration frameworks (e.g. LangChain, LlamaIndex, or equivalents), model-provider SDKs, vector databases, and evaluation tooling
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills - you can write a crisp architecture decision record and present it to a board-level audience
Preferred- Experience in a technical lead or principal engineer role with broad organizational influence
- Background working closely with product engineering teams in a dual-track agile model
- Familiarity with RAG architectures, vector databases, and semantic search at scale
- Experience with AI cost management, observability, and governance frameworks
Perks- Health, dental, and vision plans
- Amazing work-life balance with 4 weeks of Paid Time Off
- 10 Paid Company Holidays with 2 floating holidays
- 401K Programs with employer match
- Personal assistance programs for support in a healthy personal and work life
Compensation Range: $170k/yr - $215k/yr
