VP of AI Engineering - Seattle, Washington, US

Overview

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As VP of AI Engineering, you will lead the integrated AI engineering organization covering Agent Factory and Data & Intelligence to deliver production-ready AI products. You’ll establish standards, hire and grow cross-border teams in the US and India, and automate execution from partner to in-house delivery. You will drive an engineering system that scales AI capabilities across the firm while maintaining quality and alignment with product goals. This is a hands-on, senior leadership role with a strong emphasis on delivering impactful AI solutions at scale.

Responsibilities
• Build and lead the integrated engineering organization across Agent Factory and Data & Intelligence
• Hire and develop engineering teams across US and India including forward-deployed AI engineers and knowledge-graph engineers
• Set engineering hiring standards and structured selection practices
• Design a product pod model integrating engineers, product managers, and SMEs
• Collaborate with India-based engineering leadership to maintain standards across geographies
• Own delivery across the APG-built portfolio including agents, Compass experiences, and data estate
• Establish operating cadence to drive accountability, visibility, and delivery quality
• Maintain high bar for release quality with evaluation baselines informing decisions
• Oversee dependencies and ensure smooth transitions to production engineering
• Lead capability transitions from expert partners to Baker Tilly teams with defined milestones and ownership gates
• Translate partner capabilities into internal patterns, runbooks, and practices
• Manage partner delivery against defined outcomes and technical standards
• Interface with Platform & Production Engineering for production readiness
• Collaborate with Chief Architect on design and interfaces between layers
• Work with AI Product Management to translate product criteria into engineering plans
• Ensure agentic products reflect high-quality user experiences
• Provide leadership to Head of Agent Engineering and Head of Data & AI Platform
• Advise CAITO on delivery, risks, and organizational needs
• Represent APG engineering to executives and communicate complex topics clearly
• Engage in special projects and other duties as assigned

Key requirements
• 15+ years of software and product engineering experience with significant senior leadership
• Experience building an engineering organization from early stage and delivering AI products
• Hands-on credibility with LLM-based and agentic systems and evaluating architectures and trade-offs
• Strong knowledge of agentic AI product engineering, including LLM systems and evaluation-driven delivery
• Experience with data and knowledge systems, including lakehouse, knowledge xklufbp graphs, and retrieval systems
• Deep engineering management expertise: standards, hiring, delivery systems, dependencies
• Experience leading globally distributed teams (US and India) as an integrated system
• Ability to manage complex programs across vendors, partners, and time zones
• Experience in forward-deployed, client-embedded, or partner-supported models and transitioning to internal teams
• Strong executive communication skills and proactive risk management
• Proven ability to develop internal capabilities and reduce reliance on external partners
• No certifications or licenses required
• Ability to balance hands-on technical work with leadership and delivery accountability
• strategic thinking
• executive communication
• cross-functional collaboration
• LLM-based and agentic systems
• agent architectures and evaluation suites
• knowledge graphs and retrieval systems