AI Engineering Lead

ABOUT ITEMIZE

Itemize is a leading Agentic AI company automating financial operations for banks, financial services companies, and businesses. Its market-leading technology eliminates manual effort in Treasury Management, including Receivables, Wholesale Lockbox, Payables, Supply Chain, and Fraud. By automating these processes, Itemize enables teams to focus on higher-impact activities, driving efficiencies, intelligence, and new value through financial document automation.

While consumer financial systems have largely transitioned to digital technologies, business-to-business (B2B) processes remain stuck in analog workflows. Many B2B transactions still rely on paper documents, emails, and PDF images for communication between buyers, sellers, and third parties. These formats require significant human intervention for tasks such as data entry, reconciliations, verification, quality assurance, approvals, fraud screening, and compliance. This reliance on manual processes increases errors, drives up operating costs, and leaves substantial value untapped.

Itemize operates in the cloud, with teams distributed across the United States and internationally. We are committed to fostering a dynamic, high-growth environment at the forefront of vertical AI applications for B2B financial automation.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The AI Engineering Lead will drive the development and productionization of our AI systems, including large language models (LLMs), OCR, ImageML, TextML, and advanced document intelligence. You’ll lead a small but impactful AI team, contribute hands-on to core development, and collaborate closely with product, engineering, and business stakeholders to deliver AI solutions that solve real customer problems.

This role is a blend of technical execution, team leadership, and cross-functional collaboration. You’ll be responsible for helping shape our AI architecture, building scalable and reliable systems, and aligning platform capabilities with business goals.

This role will report to the Chief Technology Officer and will be responsible for:

• Team Leadership: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of AI/ML engineers and data analysts, setting priorities and ensuring technical excellence.
• Model Deployment: Partner with data scientists to take LLMs, OCR, and image/text models from prototype to production.
• AI Platform Development: Own and evolve infrastructure that supports text extraction, image classification, validation logic, and vector-based retrieval.
• Field-Level Confidence & Validation: Design and maintain systems for model validation, data voting, and field-level confidence scoring.
• MLOps & Infrastructure: Build and manage ML pipelines using AWS tools such as SageMaker, Lambda, CodePipeline, and ECS for deployment and monitoring.
• Performance Optimization: Leverage GPUs and tools like Dask or Ray to optimize inference and processing speed.

REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field; advanced degree (e.g., MS, PhD) preferred.
• Experience: 6+ years of experience in AI/ML engineering, with at least 2 years in a leadership or technical lead role.
• Technical Skills: 
  • Proficient in Python and SQL
  • Strong hands-on experience with AWS ML services (e.g., SageMaker, Lambda, CodePipeline, ECS)
  • Proven ability to deploy LLMs, OCR systems, and image classification models into production
  • Familiarity with vector databases (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate) and embedding-based retrieval
  • Experience with confidence scoring, validation pipelines, and real-time data processing
  • Skilled in GPU optimization and distributed computing frameworks like Dask or Ray

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in scaling AI-driven products from concept to production.
• Knowledge of document processing and data extraction in regulated industries (e.g., finance, healthcare).
• Background in building self-learning and human-in-the-loop systems.
• Familiarity with B2B SaaS customer needs and enterprise-grade performance expectations.
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a passion for innovation and continuous improvement.

WHAT WE OFFER

• High-energy atmosphere of a growth-stage FinTech with great traction serving Fortune 500 companies operating in more than 25 countries
• Professional development opportunities for learning and growth
• A diverse international team of techies, dog lovers, globetrotters, and musicians 
• Itemize offers flexible PTO and a generous benefits package
• The annual base salary for this role is expected to be $130,000 to $150,000, plus employee stock options. Actual base pay could vary based on experience and geographic location

Itemize is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Itemize does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status or any other basis covered by applicable law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.