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Lead Python AI Engineer

EPAM Systems


Job Location:

New York City, NY - USA

Monthly Salary: Not provided by the employer
Posted: 18 October 2026 (15 hours ago)
Application Deadline: 15 January 2027
Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

We are looking for a Lead Python AI Engineer to build robust AI-powered API services and agentic this role you will bridge the gap between traditional backend systems and modern language models focusing on secure and scalable LLM interactions with internal systems vector databases and external tools via orchestration frameworks.

We treat LLMs not as magic but as components in a secure scalable distributed system. If you take pride in API reliability graceful failure handling and production-grade AI integration wed love to talk to you.

Req#

Responsibilities
  • End-to-End Ownership: Own API contracts and service reliability end-to-end. AI edge cases must fail gracefully without compromising system integrity
  • Rigorous Systems Engineering: Integrate LLMs with a strong engineering foundationbaking in evaluation comprehensive observability robust fallback handling and cost awareness
  • Reusable Frameworks: Build reliable reusable orchestration frameworks and logic designed for downstream developer consumption
  • Design and build scalable backend API services and advanced LLM orchestration layers
  • Implement and maintain complex RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines covering document ingestion chunking embedding and retrieval optimization
  • Develop and connect agent tools using LangChain LangGraph and potentially MCP (Model Context Protocol)
  • Ensure top-tier security privacy enterprise-grade observability and comprehensive test coverage across all backend workflows
  • Contribute actively to architecture decisions and engineering standards within your pod
  • Collaborate cross-functionally with frontend engineers data engineers and infrastructure teams
Requirements
  • Backend Experience: 7 years of backend engineering with a heavy focus on microservices and distributed systems using Python for high-performance backend services and cloud-native APIs
  • Cloud & Infrastructure: Hands-on experience with AWS Docker ECS/EKS and RESTful APIs
  • Security First: Proven experience with secure coding practices and strong authentication/authorization (auth/authz) fundamentals
  • Agentic Frameworks: Practical hands-on experience with frameworks such as LangChain LlamaIndex or LangGraph
  • AI SDK Integration: 12 years of hands-on experience integrating AI SDKs (OpenAI Anthropic/Claude AWS Bedrock or equivalent) in production environments
  • AI Observability & Evaluation: Familiarity with AI evaluation tooling or real-time APM platforms (e.g. LangSmith Langfuse Arize)
  • RAG Pipelines: Practical experience working with vector databases (e.g. Amazon Kendra OpenSearch) advanced embedding strategies and retrieval systems
Nice to have
  • Frontend Fluency: 12 years of experience with React and TypeScript
  • Scale & Deployment: Experience deploying applications to EKS environments at scale
  • Interoperability & Security: Knowledge of agent interoperability patterns (MCP) and identity/security domain models (IAM CIAM)
  • Secondary Languages: Professional proficiency in Java or Go

Required Experience:

Staff IC