What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal AI Architect / AI Lead Engineer position at Burtch Works?
Job Title
Principal AI Architect / AI Lead Engineer
Location:
Chicago, IL (preferred) or Washington, D.C.
About The Company
Our client is building the AI brain of a global enterprise workforce platform. The company is focused on delivering AI-native capabilities that directly improve operational outcomes through intelligent automation, optimization, and advanced analytics.
Our client fosters a culture of innovation, ownership, and rapid execution, where engineers are empowered to build production-ready AI systems that create measurable business value. The organization emphasizes collaboration, disruptive thinking, and continuous learning while developing cutting-edge AI technologies at scale.
Job Summary
We are seeking a Principal AI Architect / AI Lead Engineer to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems that power the core capabilities of their platform. This is a highly hands-on engineering role focused on developing and operationalizing agentic AI systems, reinforcement-learning-driven optimization, and scalable AI infrastructure.
The ideal candidate is an elite builder with exceptional engineering productivity who thrives in fast-paced environments and enjoys shipping working AI systems from prototype to production. This role will involve writing production code, deploying AI agents, establishing architectural standards, and building the technical foundation required to scale the platform globally.
Key Responsibilities
Principal AI Architect / AI Lead Engineer
Location:
Chicago, IL (preferred) or Washington, D.C.
About The Company
Our client is building the AI brain of a global enterprise workforce platform. The company is focused on delivering AI-native capabilities that directly improve operational outcomes through intelligent automation, optimization, and advanced analytics.
Our client fosters a culture of innovation, ownership, and rapid execution, where engineers are empowered to build production-ready AI systems that create measurable business value. The organization emphasizes collaboration, disruptive thinking, and continuous learning while developing cutting-edge AI technologies at scale.
Job Summary
We are seeking a Principal AI Architect / AI Lead Engineer to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems that power the core capabilities of their platform. This is a highly hands-on engineering role focused on developing and operationalizing agentic AI systems, reinforcement-learning-driven optimization, and scalable AI infrastructure.
The ideal candidate is an elite builder with exceptional engineering productivity who thrives in fast-paced environments and enjoys shipping working AI systems from prototype to production. This role will involve writing production code, deploying AI agents, establishing architectural standards, and building the technical foundation required to scale the platform globally.
Key Responsibilities
- Build and Deploy Production AI Systems: Design, develop, and deploy LLM-based, agentic AI, and machine learning systems in production environments that power real-world platform capabilities.
- Develop Scalable Inference Pipelines: Build high-performance inference pipelines optimized for scalability, latency, and cost efficiency.
- Implement Reinforcement Learning Systems: Establish reinforcement learning frameworks and feedback loops that continuously improve AI performance and decision-making.
- Deploy Autonomous AI Agents: Build and deploy autonomous or semi-autonomous AI agents that operate in real-world operational environments.
- Own AI Architecture & Delivery: Write production-grade Python and machine learning code while establishing deployment, monitoring, and evaluation standards for AI systems.
- Optimize Performance & Reliability: Continuously improve model performance, latency, reliability, and inference costs across deployed AI systems.
- Define AI Platform Foundations: Architect and implement the core agentic AI framework that will support the evolution of the platform.
- Accelerate AI Development Velocity: Use modern AI-assisted development tools and parallel experimentation environments to rapidly move systems from prototype to production.
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field (advanced degree preferred).
- Experience: 6 years of experience building and deploying machine learning systems in production environments.
- Technical Skills:
- Expert-level Python software engineering skills
- Experience deploying large-scale AI/ML systems in production
- Experience with LLM deployment, inference pipelines, or AI agent frameworks
- Strong knowledge of scalable infrastructure and model deployment practices
- Engineering Practices: Proven ability to ship production AI systems end-to-end, including development, deployment, monitoring, and optimization.
- Mindset: Highly productive builder mentality with a focus on delivering real, deployed systems rather than theoretical designs.
- Experience building agentic or autonomous AI systems
- Experience implementing reinforcement learning pipelines
- Experience deploying large-scale LLM systems in production
- Expertise in inference performance optimization and cost efficiency
- Experience building AI-native platforms or complex enterprise AI infrastructure
- Competitive Salary: Market-leading compensation for senior AI engineering talent
- Health and Wellness: Comprehensive benefits package
- Work-Life Balance: Flexible work environment with strong ownership culture
- Professional Development: Opportunity to build cutting-edge AI systems and work with advanced AI technologies
- Additional Perks: Ability to shape the core AI architecture of a rapidly growing AI-native platform
Salary : $220,000 - $280,000