Lead AI Engineer (senior leadership role)

This role is for one of the Weekday's clients

Salary range: Rs 6500000 - Rs 8500000 (ie INR 65-85 LPA)

Min Experience: 7 years

Location: Bengaluru

JobType: full-timeWe are seeking a Lead AI Engineer to spearhead the design, training, and deployment of cutting-edge AI models, with a strong focus on fine-tuned LLMs and agent-based systems. In this senior leadership role, you will drive innovation across the entire AI pipeline, from defining use cases to scaling production-ready models. This is an opportunity for a technical visionary who can independently lead complex AI initiatives and deliver transformative solutions.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities

AI Strategy & Innovation

• Define and drive the AI roadmap, ensuring alignment with business objectives and technological advancements.
• Lead the development and optimization of large language models (LLMs), fine-tuning open-source (e.g., LLAMA, Deepseek) and proprietary models (e.g., GPT) for enterprise applications.
• Pioneer agent-based AI workflows, building conversational agents that enhance automation and decision-making processes.
• Conduct cutting-edge research in NLP, LLMs, and generative AI, keeping the company at the forefront of AI advancements.

Technical Execution & Deployment

• Build and validate AI prototypes, designing datasets and performing fine-tuning to maximize performance and accuracy.
• Design and implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems, optimizing chunking, indexing, and document management strategies.
• Develop scalable inference frameworks using VAM and advanced ML pipelines to streamline AI deployment.
• Oversee the productionization of AI models, working closely with software engineers to integrate models seamlessly into applications.
• Personalize AI models by leveraging large-scale data analytics, improving model performance and user experiences.

Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Provide technical leadership, mentoring teams across engineering, product, and data science.
• Collaborate with design and product teams to craft engaging, AI-driven user experiences.
• Act as a strategic partner to business leaders, translating AI capabilities into tangible business impact.
• Publish research and contribute to the broader AI community, enhancing industry recognition.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in AI and machine learning, with at least 3+ years focused on LLM fine-tuning, NLP, and GenAI.
• Proven track record of training and deploying LLMs in production at scale.
• Expertise in LLM pretraining, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, agentic workflows, and inference optimization.
• Strong programming skills in Python, TensorFlow/PyTorch, and cloud-based AI architectures.
• Ability to independently own and execute AI projects in a fast-paced, evolving startup environment.
• Exceptional communication skills, capable of explaining AI-driven insights to non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience setting up AI workflows, tools, and infrastructure from scratch, demonstrating a startup mindset.
• Strong leadership skills with the ability to drive cross-functional collaboration and decision-making.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s or Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Experience in financial AI applications, understanding compliance, privacy, and regulatory challenges.
• Familiarity with reinforcement learning techniques and agent-based AI systems.