VP of Engineering Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Required, Work From Home

Next Step Systems is a national IT recruiting firm. The company is seeking a VP of Engineering Applications to lead application engineering strategy, teams, architecture, and execution for AI-powered products across backend, mobile, and desktop platforms. The role focuses on translating machine learning capabilities into reliable products while ensuring performance, security, observability, and production readiness.

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Responsibilities

• Own the application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile, and desktop
• Lead and grow a small, senior applications team, including backend, mobile, and desktop engineers
• Set the architectural direction for Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered product workflows, APIs, and client integrations
• Ensure AI capabilities are integrated into the product with clear abstractions, predictable behavior, and graceful failure modes
• Partner closely with Machine Learning leadership to translate model capability into shippable product features
• Make high-impact decisions across latency, cost, reliability, security, and user experience
• Establish clear ownership boundaries across backend, mobile, and desktop to prevent architectural drift
• Ensure production readiness: observability, monitoring, retries, fallbacks, privacy, and cost controls
• Balance speed and discipline shipping quickly without compromising long-term system quality

Benefits

• Medical insurance
• Dental
• Vision
• Savings Plan Options
• PTO
• 100% Remote
• IT executive recruitment firm placing professionals in permanent full-time roles.
• Naperville, Illinois, USA
• https://www.nextstepsystems.com/
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Qualifications

• Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) experience required
• Strong hands-on background building and shipping backend systems used in production
• Experience delivering Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered products, with a deep understanding of model integration trade-offs
• Excellent system design skills across services, APIs, clients, and data flows
• Comfort operating across platforms (backend, mobile, desktop), even if your depth is in one
• Proven ability to make high-impact technical decisions under ambiguity
• A strong bias toward shipping, iteration, and learning from real-world usage
• Low ego, strong judgment, and the ability to raise the technical bar for the entire applications organization

Required skills

• AI-Powered Product Development, API Design, Application Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Backend Engineering, Desktop Application Development, Mobile Application Development, Model Integration, System Design