# Staff Engineer, AI Platform & Architecture

**Company:** [Shield AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/shield-ai)
**Location:** Remote
**Role:** ML Engineering
**Salary:** $190k – $290k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**Skills:** Generative AI, llm integration, RAG, Agentic AI, prompt orchestration, MLOps, ai observability, Vector Databases, Databricks, Snowflake, Python, APIs, Kubernetes
**Posted:** 2026-07-24

> Staff Engineer responsible for designing enterprise AI platform architecture, reusable components, responsible AI controls, observability, and governance patterns. Requires deep expertise in generative AI, RAG, agentic workflows, and influencing cross-functional teams without direct authority.

## Job Description

## What you'll do

### AI Platform Architecture & Standards
- Define and evolve enterprise AI architecture patterns for LLM integration, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows, prompt orchestration, and workflow automation.
- Create reference architectures, design reviews, decision records, and implementation guidance that enable consistent AI development across business units.
- Serve as a technical authority for AI platform decisions, including model selection, integration approaches, data boundary enforcement, and lifecycle management.
- Evaluate emerging AI technologies and recommend fit-for-purpose adoption paths aligned to security, operational, and enterprise architecture requirements.
- Partner with product, platform, and business technology teams to identify common needs and convert them into reusable engineering patterns.

### Reusable Components & Shared Services
- Design and build reusable AI components such as connectors, agents, skill templates, prompt libraries, data pipelines, integration adapters, and service APIs.
- Lead technical design for shared platform services for AI observability, logging, usage metering, evaluation, and lifecycle management.
- Establish quality, versioning, deprecation, documentation, and contribution standards for the shared AI component catalog.
- Guide teams through adoption of shared components, balancing standardization with practical implementation needs.
- Identify opportunities to eliminate duplicate AI engineering efforts through consolidation, abstractions, and platformization.

### Responsible AI Engineering & Governance
- Architect engineering controls for access management, data classification enforcement, prompt safety, output validation, audit logging, and policy adherence.
- Partner with Security, Legal, and compliance stakeholders to embed responsible AI requirements into development and deployment pipelines.
- Design model and agent lifecycle governance patterns, including version tracking, evaluation, drift monitoring, rollback, and deprecation workflows.
- Build technical dashboards and telemetry that expose adoption, risk, performance, and governance compliance across AI-enabled systems.
- Represent engineering considerations in AI governance reviews and translate policy requirements into implementable technical standards.

### Productivity, Measurement & Technical Leadership
- Develop AI-assisted workflow patterns that improve individual productivity, team collaboration, knowledge retrieval, meeting intelligence, document generation, and task automation.
- Design measurement approaches that connect AI usage to time savings, quality improvement, error reduction, capacity creation, and business value.
- Partner with Finance and platform teams to develop cost metering, showback/chargeback, and optimization mechanisms for AI services.
- Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, raise engineering quality, and lead complex cross-functional technical initiatives from concept through production.
- Contribute to communities of practice, internal enablement material, and technical evangelism for enterprise AI engineering standards.

## Required qualifications
- Progressive experience in enterprise software engineering, AI platform engineering, data platform engineering, or digital workplace technology roles.
- Deep hands-on understanding of generative AI, large language model integration, RAG architectures, agentic AI patterns, prompt orchestration, and production AI system design.
- Experience designing shared platform services, reusable component libraries, APIs, integration frameworks, or developer enablement platforms used by multiple teams.
- Strong architecture judgment across security, reliability, scalability, observability, maintainability, and operational cost tradeoffs.
- Experience implementing or contributing to AI governance controls such as access management, data classification, audit logging, model lifecycle management, and compliance-aware development practices.
- Ability to influence technical direction across matrixed teams through architecture reviews, written guidance, reference implementations, and hands-on collaboration.
- Experience defining metrics, telemetry, or attribution mechanisms for adoption, productivity, cost, quality, or operational performance.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex AI engineering concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.

## Preferred qualifications
- Experience in regulated, defense-adjacent, security-sensitive, or data-governed environments.
- Background in MLOps, AI observability, model evaluation frameworks, agent evaluation, and production monitoring.
- Familiarity with enterprise AI tooling ecosystems including copilot platforms, workflow automation suites, vector databases, and enterprise search/RAG platforms.
- Hands-on experience with enterprise data platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, lakehouse architectures, or comparable data foundations.
- Experience implementing usage metering, cost allocation, showback/chargeback, or AI spend optimization capabilities.
- Track record of mentoring engineers and raising technical standards without relying on direct management authority.
- Advanced degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field.

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**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/4b0a95da-6689-4664-abdc-0883deda231b
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