Lead AI Software Engineer

Lead AI Software Engineer

Fulcrum Digital — AI Engineering

Grade: 3A

Department: AI Engineering

Experience Required: 5–8 years

Location: Pune, India

Employment Type: Full-Time

As a Lead AI Software Engineer, you'll provide technical leadership for a workstream building complex, multi-agent AI systems — owning the architecture, setting the technical bar, and acting as the bridge between engineering, product, security, and compliance.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership for a team/workstream building multi-agent and multi-model AI systems

• Own architecture decisions and lead design reviews (Architecture Decision Records) for key AI initiatives

• Architect scalable, full-stack AI solutions spanning data engineering, model training/fine-tuning, and LLMOps

• Drive cost and performance optimization for AI systems running at enterprise scale

• Partner cross-functionally with Product, Data Science, Security, and Compliance to shape solution design

• Evaluate and select AI tools, frameworks, and vendors for the team

• Mentor and upskill engineers, fostering technical growth within the team

• Balance hands-on technical contribution with team-level planning and delivery accountability

Skills & Key Competencies

Must-Have Technical Skills

• Technical leadership of AI engineering workstreams or a small team

• Architecting complex multi-agent/multi-model AI systems at scale

• Full-stack AI expertise: data engineering, model training/fine-tuning, LLMOps, infrastructure

• Owns architecture decisions and design reviews (ADRs)

• Cross-functional partnership with Product, Data Science, Security, and Compliance

• Cost and performance optimization of AI systems in production

• Mentors and upskills engineers

Good-to-Have Technical Skills

• Experience building/owning internal AI platforms or agent frameworks

• Vendor and AI tool evaluation/selection

• Contribution to AI governance and compliance frameworks (GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA-aware design)

• Experience in regulated or highly audited environments

Key Competencies

• Balances big-picture architectural thinking with a willingness to get into the weeds

• Decisive under ambiguity — can make an 80%-confidence call and move the team forward

• Strong stakeholder management across technical and non-technical audiences

• Builds trust quickly with both engineers and cross-functional partners

• Invests genuinely in growing people, not just shipping features

• Holds a high technical bar without being a bottleneck