Lead AI Engineer, Business Operations (Hybrid or Remote)

AFL manufactures industry-leading fiber optic cable, connectivity and accessories and provides engineering and installation services for some of the largest telecom customers in the world. Our company was founded in 1984 with a single fiber optic cable and today, we manufacture thousands of products, generate an excess of $2B in revenue, and employ approximately 11,000 associates worldwide. At AFL, we recognize that our employees are our greatest asset. We hire and train each individual, investing in them to ensure success in their careers. With a commitment to professional development and growth, let us connect you to your next career opportunity.

Key responsibilities/essential functions include:

• Establishes the architectural patterns, evaluation practices, and deployment standards for the team
• Makes framework and model recommendations that set the foundation for the team. Will evaluate orchestration frameworks, select deployment patterns, train and fine-tune models, and determine where managed platforms end and custom build begins

• Collaborates with the AI Enablement Manager and business unit to optimize operational processes, owning the infrastructure architecture and translating strategic direction into technical plans, product life cycles, a prioritized backlog, and buildable work
• Owns solutions end-to-end: technical planning, architecture, build, and deployment, then continuously monitors, iterates, and improves them to keep them reliable in production

• Builds and continuously maintains the monitoring, evaluation, and regression detection systems that keep production agents reliable over time, including logging, performance benchmarking, and feedback loops that surface drift early

• Partners with data governance to ensure solutions meet compliance, data quality, and operational standards

• Innovative and tech-savvy, with deep curiosity about emerging AI capabilities and how to apply them
• Analytical and detail-oriented, with a strong architectural mindset
• Collaborative and communicative, able to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders
• Self-directed and accountable, able to set technical direction and drive execution independently

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of software engineering and architecture experience with a strong full-stack foundation — backend services, API design, system integration, and data infrastructure
• Recent hands-on experience architecting and delivering AI or LLM-backed systems in production
• Experience architecting solutions from scratch and owning them through deployment, observability, testing, and ongoing reliability
• Experience with AI development practices — model selection, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, and understanding when each approach is the right fit
• Proficiency in Python; experience with cloud platforms
• Experience mentoring engineers and setting technical direction across multiple initiatives
• Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Environment: Remote work environment (US-based).
• Travel: Occasional travel (domestic) as needed.