Lead AI/ML Software Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Colorado, +5 more states.

📋 Description

• Lead architectural decisions for the [R]AIMS platform by assessing trade-offs in performance, scalability, security, and maintainability, while fostering alignment among engineering and product stakeholders.

• Oversee significant technical initiatives from inception to delivery, breaking down ambiguous challenges into actionable plans and ensuring cross-functional teams maintain clarity and momentum.

• Streamline and rationalize the distributed system architecture as the platform expands, minimizing incidental complexity and enhancing operational reliability while maintaining functionality.

• Enhance platform performance for both edge and cloud deployment targets by identifying and resolving bottlenecks in data-intensive and latency-sensitive operational settings.

• Create robust engineering foundations and reusable technical patterns to boost developer productivity and elevate code quality throughout the team.

• Guide engineers at various levels through design reviews, offering meaningful code feedback, and actively advancing technical execution across the platform.

• Collaborate with AI/ML engineers on model integration, inference optimization, and the operational launch of agentic workflows within [R]AIMS.

• Directly engage with customers and program stakeholders in high-demand environments across the Department of Defense, effectively representing Raft’s technical capabilities with credibility and clarity.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 6 years of practical experience in building and deploying production software systems across the full stack (frontend, backend, infrastructure, and ML).

• Strong software engineering fundamentals with a proven ability to design, build, and evolve complex systems that function reliably at scale.

• Outstanding technical communication skills; capable of leading through influence among engineering, product, and leadership stakeholders without needing direct authority.

• Proven experience in designing and evolving distributed systems, focusing on service decomposition, inter-service communication patterns, fault tolerance, and observability.

• Significant hands-on experience with Kubernetes and cloud-native platform architecture within production environments.

• Experience in creating data-intensive or AI-enabled production systems with actual operational users and real performance constraints.

• Demonstrated technical leadership over large, cross-functional engineering projects with clear ownership and accountability for results.

• Strong ability in system design and architecture decision-making, with a history of making informed decisions under incomplete information.

• Some familiarity or exposure to training, fine-tuning, or deploying machine learning models in production settings.

• Capability to obtain Security+ certification within the first 90 days of employment.

• US citizenship is required; must be able to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI clearance.

🏝️ Benefits

• Highly competitive salary

• Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage

• 401(k) with company match

• Flexible PTO + 11 paid holidays

• Education & training benefits

• Generous Referral Bonuses

• And More!