William Blair & Co LLC

Lead Data Scientist - AI Engineer

William Blair & Co LLC$186K — $222K *
Finance & Insurance
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of software engineering experience in full-stack development.
  • Hands-on experience with large language models and AI agents.
  • Proven experience in deploying multi-agent environments and ensuring reliability.
  • Strong fundamentals in machine learning and data analysis.
  • Commitment to rigorous engineering practices with well-documented code.
  • Familiarity with investment banking or related financial sectors.
  • Experience with cloud platforms and data orchestration tools.

Responsibilities

  • Design integration layers for AI banking workflows using Salesforce and proprietary models.
  • Develop intelligent AI agents for high-value banking tasks.
  • Establish engineering standards for code quality and deployment practices.
  • Collaborate with teams to identify workflow automation opportunities.
  • Build and manage data pipelines for machine learning and analytics.
  • Rapidly prototype solutions to address banker pain points.
  • Integrate third-party AI solutions while maintaining data integrity and user experience.

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
  • Employer-paid short and long-term disability and life insurance.
  • 401(k) with profit-sharing options.
  • Generous paid time off policy.
  • Family and fertility benefits with parental leave provisions.
Full Job Description
We are looking for a Lead AI Engineer to join a newly formed AI Innovation Function, part of the Investment Banking AI & Technology team. This is not a back-office engineering role. Inspired by the Forward Deployed Engineer model, you will be embedded directly with deal teams and industry groups-understanding their workflows firsthand, building AI-powered tools that deliver measurable outcomes, and taking end-to-end accountability for what you ship.

You will set the engineering standards for the team: architecture decisions, code quality, testing practices, and deployment patterns. You will work across the full stack-from data pipelines and ML models to LLM orchestration and Salesforce integrations-with the options to choose the right tool for each problem and the discipline to build for longevity.

RESPONSIBILITIES
  • Design and build the integration layer between Enterprise Claude, Salesforce CRM, and our proprietary ML models, creating the orchestration backbone for AI-powered banking workflows.
  • Develop AI agents and multi-step LLM applications for high-value use cases: CIP first-draft generation, buyer landscape analysis, intelligent process letter drafting, and deal status automation.
  • Set engineering standards for the Innovation Team: code review practices, CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, and documentation norms that enable speed without sacrificing reliability.
  • Work directly with deal teams and industry/sector groups to understand workflows, identify automation opportunities, and iterate on deployed tools based on real-world banker feedback.
  • Build and maintain data pipelines using Databricks and Dagster for feature engineering, model training, and analytics that feed AI capabilities.
  • Perform rapid analysis and prototyping-translate a banker's pain point into a working proof of concept within days, not weeks.
  • Evaluate and integrate point solutions (Rogo.ai, Blueflame AI, Fellow.ai) via APIs, ensuring clean data flows and consistent user experiences within Salesforce.
  • Implement security and data governance protocols appropriate for confidential deal information.

QUALIFICATIONS
  • 5+ years of software engineering experience with a strong full-stack foundation, including production experience building applications that serve demanding end users.
  • Hands-on experience building applications or agents using large language models: prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, multi-step orchestration, tool use, and evaluation frameworks.
  • Experience deploying and operating multi-agent ecosystems in production - including reliability engineering, monitoring, failure recovery, and scaling agent infrastructure for enterprise workloads.
  • Strong ML fundamentals-ability to train, evaluate, and deploy models, perform exploratory data analysis, and build feature pipelines.
  • Rigorous engineering practices: you write tested, reviewed, well-documented code and build systems designed for maintainability, not just demos.
  • Familiarity with capital markets, and preferably direct experience in or adjacent to investment banking, private equity, venture capital, or hedge funds.
  • Experience with cloud infrastructure (Azure preferred), data platforms (Databricks/Spark), and orchestration tools (Dagster, Airflow, or equivalent).
  • Outcome orientation-you measure success by business impact delivered, not features shipped.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
  • Experience in a Forward Deployed Engineer, solutions engineer, or embedded technical role where you owned outcomes alongside business stakeholders.
  • Prior work with Salesforce APIs, SOQL, or CRM integration patterns.
  • Experience architecting production-grade, interconnected multi-agent ecosystems - designing agent coordination patterns, shared tooling layers, and communication protocols across autonomous components.
  • Experience building AI tools for financial professionals, including document generation, financial analysis automation, or deal workflow tooling.
  • Contributions to engineering culture: mentoring, establishing best practices, or leading technical design reviews in a small-team environment.

#LI-CH

#LI-HYBRID

A reasonable estimate of the current base salary range at time of posting is below. Base salary does not include other forms of compensation or benefits. Actual base salary within the specified range is based on several factors, including but not limited to applicant's skills, prior relevant experience, specific degrees and certifications, job responsibilities, market considerations and, if applicable, the location of the position.

This role is eligible for either a discretionary annual bonus (based on company, business unit and individual performance) and/or commission-based incentives.

Our featured benefit offerings include medical, dental and vision coverage, employer paid short & long-term disability and life insurance, 401(k), profit sharing, paid time off, Maven family & fertility benefit, parental leave (including adoption, surrogacy, and foster placement), as well as other voluntary benefits.

Salary Range

$186,000-$222,000 USD

About William Blair & Co LLC

William Blair is a global investment banking and asset management firm that provides advisory services, strategies, and solutions to meet clients' evolving needs. The firm's investment banking group offers mergers and acquisitions, public and private financing, and other advisory services. William Blair's asset management group provides investment management, wealth management, and retirement planning services. The firm is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and has over 1,400 employees worldwide.
Learn more about William Blair & Co LLC
Size
1,400 employees
Industry
NASDAQ

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