AI Engineer Manager / AI Development Manager

Carters is seeking an AI Engineer Manager to lead its enterprise Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence (CoE) as a player-coach. The role combines team leadership with hands-on architecture and delivery of high-stakes AI solutions, translating prioritized use cases into shipped, supported capabilities while elevating engineering standards across the enterprise.

Role Summary

Lead the AI CoE development team and mentor engineers while staying directly involved in the design and build of complex AI systems. Own end-to-end execution for CoE delivery against a build backlog, collaborate with intake and prioritization stakeholders, and establish reusable, governed patterns that help business users deliver consistent outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the AI CoE development team (Junior/Mid AI Developers and intern developers), including assignments, priorities, performance, and career growth.
• Own sprint planning and delivery execution for the CoE build backlog in partnership with the Solutions Manager’s intake and prioritization.
• Run code and design reviews; unblock developers while managing delivery risks and dependencies.
• Coordinate with Forward-Deployed Engineers so embedded builds follow CoE standards and can be handed back cleanly.
• Report delivery status, capacity, and velocity to CoE leadership.
• Personally design and build the most complex or highest-stakes AI solutions, including agentic workflows, LLM applications, skills, and connector-based automations.
• Consult with business units and Forward-Deployed Engineers on solution feasibility, approach, and effort, converting ambiguous requests into buildable designs.
• Prototype new patterns (such as natural-language query over governed data, document generation, and incident summarization) and harden successful pilots into production solutions.
• Act as an escalation point for technical issues across CoE-supported solutions.
• Define and enforce AI development standards, including coding practices, testing, documentation, versioning, and release management.
• Curate a CoE pattern library of reusable, governed building blocks for business super users and champions.
• Partner with the AI Security & Governance Manager to ensure each building pass security review efficiently (access controls, data flows, and prompt-injection safeguards).
• Mentor super developers in business units through office hours and paired builds that move prototypes into supported solutions.

Required Qualifications

• At least 7+ years of software and/or data analytics development experience.
• At least 2+ years leading or managing developers, including 1+ years building Generative AI (GenAI) and/or large language models (LLMs)-based solutions.
• Hands-on AI development experience shipping LLM applications, agentic workflows, or AI-powered automations against enterprise systems and APIs.
• Proven experience with enterprise AI platforms and frameworks, including examples such as Claude/Anthropic API, Azure OpenAI, MCP-style tool integrations, and RAG architectures.
• Experience leading sprint planning, backlog grooming, and prioritization processes with stakeholders to deliver critical features and meet strategic goals.
• Strong communication skills partnering with non-technical stakeholders, clarifying ambiguous needs, facilitating discussions, and providing clear, constructive, and empathetic feedback to developers.
• Delivery leadership experience running agile delivery, including backlog management, code review discipline, and predictable releases.
• Integration fluency with enterprise data and platform integrations (including BI tools, cloud data warehouses, collaboration and ticketing systems).
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, and/or related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Technologies

• Claude/Anthropic API
• Azure OpenAI
• MCP-style tool integrations
• RAG architectures

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Familiarity with MLOps/LLMOps practices, including evaluation, monitoring, versioning, and cost management.
• Retail or consumer-products industry experience.
• Experience building cross-functional teams and supporting team development.

Location and Work Setup

Atlanta, GA (onsite)