Lead Ai Engineer

Piper Companies is seeking a Lead AI Engineer to partner with executive technology leadership to build and scale an emerging intelligence function within a growing organization in the technology services industry. The Lead AI Engineer will drive the design, deployment, and integration of advanced AI capabilities across enterprise, mobile, and web platforms.

Responsibilities of the Lead AI Engineer:

• Partner with the CTO to launch and scale the Emerging Intelligence Group, defining mission, priorities, and early deliverables.

• Deliver AI-driven features across web, mobile, and enterprise platforms.

• Design, build, and deploy LLM-powered applications, RAG pipelines, and scalable APIs connecting model intelligence with real-world experiences.

• Collaborate with Product Engineering to integrate AI into employee- and client-facing systems.

• Serve as a technical liaison between data engineering, software engineering, and product management.

• Partner with Cybersecurity, Legal, and Infrastructure to establish AI governance, ethics, and transparency standards.

Qualifications of the Lead AI Engineer:

• 8+ years of combined software engineering and AI product development experience.

• Hands-on experience designing and deploying LLM / Generative AI solutions.

• Proficiency with LangChain, Hugging Face, LlamaIndex, or similar frameworks.

• Strong RAG architecture and vector database experience.

• Proficient in AWS services (Bedrock, Lambda, S3) and modern full‑stack development.

• Experience building and integrating RESTful APIs. Must have Full stack engineering experience

• Excellent communicator with an entrepreneurial, “startup‑within‑an‑enterprise” mindset. Must Be a US Citizen or GC

Compensation for the Lead AI Engineer includes:

• Salary range: 130K - 175K plus bonus and LTI

• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401(k), and PTO

• Hybrid schedule in Durham, NC

This job opens for applications on 02/03/2026. Applications for this job will be accepted for at least 30 days from the posting date.

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