Staff AI/ML full Stack Engineer & Lead

Greetings from Smart Work IT Services, We are hiring for the below role.

Title: Staff AI/ML full Stack Engineer & Lead

Location: Normal, IL

Mandatory Skillsets

• Full stack software dev
• AWS/Databricks cloud
• AI pipeline
  
  

Role Summary

We are seeking a Staff AI/ML solution lead to lead the architecture, design, and delivery of high-performance, enterprise-grade applications. This role combines deep hands-on coding with high-level architectural decision-making. You will work across frontend, backend, cloud infrastructure, database selection and integration layers, ensuring our systems are secure, scalable, and maintainable while enabling long-term technical growth. This hybrid role combines hands-on software engineering, devops and architectural leadership, enabling the delivery of robust, scalable, and innovative AI systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Architecture Leadership – Define system architecture, integration patterns, and technology standards for large-scale web and enterprise applications.
• Full Stack Development – Build and maintain robust, responsive applications using modern frontend frameworks (React, Vue, streamlit or Angular) and backend services in Python, Golang or RUST.
• Cloud & Infrastructure – Architect cloud-native solutions leveraging AWS with a focus on scalability, security, and performance. Implement containerized services with Docker and orchestrate deployments using Kubernetes (K8s).
• API & Service Design – Develop RESTful and GraphQL APIs for internal and external integrations.
• DevOps & CI/CD – Establish best practices for deployment pipelines, automated testing, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi).
• Performance Optimization – Drive system performance tuning, load balancing, and efficient code design.
• Technical Mentorship – Coach and mentor engineers, conduct design/code reviews, and uphold engineering best practices.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration – Partner with product, design, and business teams to deliver impactful solutions aligned with company objectives.
• Databases: Will be performing database selection and deployment (strong devops experience required)
• ML: Experience with both ML and LLM stack design (model hubs, vector DBs, embedding pipelines). The role required knowledge to deploy end-to-end architecture of ML applications, traditional and RAG applications, Design of the MLOPS architectures databricks, aws and google
  
  

ML ops: Strong uderstanding of Agentic AI, framework, best practices

Clouds: Databricks, AWS mandatory

• End to End production level AI/MLl product deployment experience is required
  
  

Required Qualifications

• At least bachelor’s in Computer Science mandatory
• 10 years in deployment enterprise grade cloud level experience and 5 years in software development
• 5 years of experience with Databricks and AWS MLops deployment
• This role is more of a software lead and developer with strong Cloud experience to develop infra softwares.
• Architect end-to-end agentic pipelines and tools for others to contribute in the team
• The role required knowledge to deploy end-to-end architecture of ML applications, traditional and RAG applications.
• Architect end-to-end AI/ML systems from data ingestion to model deployment.
• Define best practices for model serving, data pipelines, and ML-OPS strategies.
• engineering, including hands-on model development and architectural design.
• Expertise in traditional ML, deep learning, LLMs, embeddings, and RAG frameworks.
• Strong software engineering skills: Python, API development, microservices, database design, and version control (Git).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Databricks, Google) and containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Knowledge of ML-OPS, CI/CD for AI, and production model monitoring.
• Strong understanding of software architecture patterns, distributed systems, and scalable data pipelines.
• Databases: Will be performing database selection and deployment (strong devops experience required)
  
  

Preferred

• Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging systems (NATs, Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Familiarity with authentication and authorization frameworks (OAuth2, JWT, SSO).
• Knowledge of observability and monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Open Telemetry).
• Background in designing large-scale enterprise or SaaS platforms.
• Python, Golang and Rust development experience is preferred
• Experience in manufacturing and predictive maintenance is a plus
• Background in controls engineering is a plus
  
  

Soft Skills

• Strong decision-making and problem-solving skills in high-stakes technical environments.
• Ability to lead and influence architectural direction across teams.
• Excellent communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.