Lead AI Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Latin America.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the knowledge plane, encompassing project conventions, reusable agent procedures, source indexing, and enforcement.

• Develop artifact-based verification gates that assess test and coverage modifications, including protected pathways for tests and CI configurations.

• Create least-privilege authority and identity systems featuring short-lived agent credentials and commit attribution.

• Adjust autonomy tiers based on reversibility and incident history.

• Engineer containment through mechanisms like circuit breakers, workflow ceilings, progressive exposure, and rollback strategies.

• Manage intake, deduplication, routing, gate logging, and the evaluation harness.

• Conduct an improvement ritual utilizing dated incidents, thresholds for rule creation, and ongoing cost-versus-prevention assessments.

• Oversee the development of a client pipeline where business users initiate tasks, AI agents execute them, and engineers review the results.

• Make operational decisions regarding system functionality during a full-time dedicated client engagement.

⛳️ Requirements

• Located in Latin America, with sufficient timezone overlap for daily collaboration with a U.S.-based engineering team.

• More than 10 years of experience in software engineering.

• Extensive CI/CD and platform expertise, including the construction of pipelines relied upon by other engineers.

• Strong capabilities in software engineering.

• Security instincts related to least privilege, credential scope, blast radius, and handling untrusted input.

• Proficient testing judgment, including assessing test flake rates and validating test artifacts.

• Practical experience in driving coding agents to accomplish real work.

• Cross-functional operational experience with SRE, security, legal, and support teams.

• Strong writing skills for creating conventions, procedures, incident records, and policy arguments.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills in English.

🏝️ Benefits

• Full-time, dedicated client engagement that fosters genuine ownership.

• Executive sponsorship with protected time, free from the expectation of managing a feature roadmap.

• Focus on low-risk changes from start to finish, while higher-risk changes are gated, and irreversible changes remain with humans.

• Access to a curated network of high-caliber, values-driven professionals.

• Opportunity to engage in meaningful, strategic work on your terms.

• Ability to maintain momentum without experiencing burnout.

• Access to Empirical’s community, engineering talent, and shared knowledge base.

• Collaborate with clients who prioritize clarity, velocity, and outcomes—not merely hours worked.