Lead AI Engineer

Qualified Health PBC is building agentic AI systems that support its full product portfolio, and you will help set the technical direction for how that work scales. This Lead AI Engineer role is based in Palo Alto, CA (onsite) and comes with a USD 230,000 - 350,000 salary range per year, plus equity packages.

You will partner with founders and engineering leadership to connect AI infrastructure investment to company strategy. The focus is both hands-on and organizational: defining multi-year architecture, establishing standards for LLM evaluation and deployment safety, and mentoring staff-level engineers as the applied AI function grows.

What you’ll do

• Define the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for agentic workflow infrastructure across the QH product portfolio, supporting 100+ workflows and growing.
• Shape decisions on product direction, build-versus-buy, and platform investment by representing applied AI engineering at cross-functional and leadership levels.
• Set org-wide engineering standards for LLM evaluation, deployment, safety, and monitoring, contributing to QH’s broader AI governance approach.
• Serve as a technical escalation point for the hardest and highest-ambiguity problems across multiple product lines.
• Mentor and develop Staff-level engineers, including support for the technical career ladder for applied AI roles.
• Stay ahead of model and tooling changes by evaluating emerging options such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral, and determining what is worth adopting.

Requirements

• Python required with a strong foundation in software engineering and demonstrated experience architecting systems used company-wide.
• 8+ years building production software, including 4+ years building and scaling AI-powered or LLM-driven applications in production.
• Proven track record setting technical direction and standards adopted across multiple teams, not limited to a single product line.
• Deep expertise in MLOps, model deployment, and workflow automation at an organizational or platform level.
• Ability to operate with full autonomy on ambiguous, high-stakes technical and strategic problems.
• Strong influence at the leadership level, including with non-technical stakeholders.

Technologies

• Python
• LLM
• MLOps
• OpenAI
• Anthropic
• Mistral

Benefits

• Competitive salaries with equity packages
• Robust medical/dental/vision insurance
• Flexible working hours
• Hybrid work options
• Inclusive environment that fosters creativity and innovation
• Eligible for equity and benefits

Desirable skills

• Bachelor’s degree + 10 years OR Master’s degree + 8 years in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Recognized expertise in applied AI or agentic systems (internally or externally), such as talks, publications, open source contributions, or prior platform-level roles.
• Experience building AI infrastructure in a regulated or high-stakes domain (healthcare, finance, etc.).
• Experience founding or scaling a technical function from the ground up in a startup environment.
• Experience mentoring Staff-level engineers and shaping technical career ladders.