Lead Software Engineer, AI Email Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Required - Work From Home

Next Step Systems is a national IT recruiting firm. The company is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to own the engineering strategy and execution for AI-powered email applications across backend, mobile, and desktop platforms, while leading a senior engineering team and ensuring scalable, reliable production systems.

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• 2 email credits available today
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Responsibilities

• Own the application engineering strategy and execution across backend, mobile, and desktop
• Design reliable systems for AI-powered workflows, including state, orchestration, tool use, retries, fallbacks, and failure handling
• Build the APIs and abstractions that connect Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems to real-world product experiences
• Lead a small, senior engineering team and raise the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, and hands-on mentorship
• Make high-impact trade-offs across latency, reliability, cost, security, and user experience
• Establish strong production foundations: observability, monitoring, testing, and operational excellence
• Partner closely with Machine Learning (ML) leadership to turn model capabilities into robust, shippable product experiences
• Move quickly while keeping the architecture simple, maintainable, and ready to scale

Benefits

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

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) experience is required
• Significant experience leading application or product engineering for complex systems
• Strong hands-on background building and shipping backend systems used in production
• Experience building AI-powered products or systems that integrate with modern Machine Learning (ML)/Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities
• Strong technical judgment and the ability to make decisions with incomplete information
• Comfortable working across backend and client platforms, with deep expertise in at least one
• A strong bias toward ownership, shipping, and learning from real-world usage
• High standards for code quality, reliability, and engineering fundamentals

Required skills

• Application Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Backend Engineering, Large Language Models, Machine Learning