Principal, AI Engineering Lead
Ares Management Corporation2 months ago
Base Salary
$275k - $350k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design and build the enterprise generative AI platform on Databricks and Azure, including model serving, retrieval infrastructure, agent orchestration, and deployment pipelines.
- Architect and operate a multi-LLM gateway with routing, cost tracking, rate limiting, and model failover across Azure OpenAI and other providers.
- Build hybrid RAG retrieval services using embedding models, Databricks Vector Search, Unity Catalog, structured extraction, and analytical, semantic, and hybrid query routing.
- Develop reusable agentic orchestration, model registry, prompt library, agent-to-agent workflows, and sandbox-to-production deployment capabilities.
- Implement MNPI controls, information barriers, audit logging, access controls, and retrieval permissioning aligned with governance requirements.
- Maintain LLM observability for latency, token spend, retrieval quality, hallucination flags, and per-use-case cost attribution.
- Define platform APIs, SDKs, engineering standards, evaluation criteria, and reusable patterns for vertical AI teams.
- Provide technical guidance and code review, collaborate with AI Product Management and business stakeholders, and mentor senior and mid-level AI engineers.
- Drive technical decisions, resolve cross-cutting platform issues, and produce architecture diagrams, decision records, and governance documentation.
Requirements
- 8+ years of experience in software or data engineering and 4+ years focused on ML/AI platform engineering or LLM application development.
- Deep hands-on experience with Databricks, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, Model Serving, and Vector Search on Azure or comparable platforms.
- Production experience building RAG pipelines with embedding models, vector databases, hybrid retrieval, and document chunking strategies.
- Strong Python engineering experience, including API services, asynchronous patterns, prompt templating, and LLM SDK integration.
- Experience with multi-LLM gateway and model-routing patterns such as LiteLLM, plus LLM providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, or Azure OpenAI.
- Familiarity with agentic frameworks and multi-agent orchestration patterns such as LangGraph, AutoGen, or custom implementations.
- Proficiency with Azure OpenAI, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Entra ID, Key Vault, and Azure Networking.
- Experience with MLflow or equivalent tools for experiment tracking, model versioning, and registry management.
- Strong DevOps fundamentals involving CI/CD for ML/AI, infrastructure-as-code, container deployment, and observability tooling.
- Experience in regulated industries with data governance, access controls, and audit requirements.
- Ability to translate complex business workflows into platform architecture, communicate with senior stakeholders, and produce executive-quality governance documentation.
- Track record of setting engineering standards across multiple teams and operating autonomously in a greenfield environment.
- Preferred: private equity, investment banking, asset management, or related financial-services experience and familiarity with deal, portfolio, investor-relations, fund-accounting, or compliance workflows.
- Preferred: MCP gateway design, agent tool-use frameworks, RAGAS, LLM-as-judge or custom evaluation harnesses, Langfuse, Weights & Biases, and AI governance processes.
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical/Rx, dental, and vision plans.
- 401(k) program with company match, Flexible Savings Accounts, and Healthcare Savings Accounts with company contribution.
- Basic and voluntary life insurance, short-term and long-term disability insurance, Employee Assistance Program, and commuter benefits for parking and transit.
- Access to medical advisory, mental health, mindfulness and wellbeing, and financial wellness programs.
- New parent leave, reproductive and adoption assistance, emergency backup care, matching gift program, education sponsorship, and additional benefits.
- Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis until the search is no longer active.
Categories
About Ares Management Corporation
Ares Management Corporation is a global alternative investment manager that raises and manages funds across credit, private equity, real estate, and infrastructure for institutional and individual investors. It earns management and performance fees by investing and providing direct lending and other financing solutions to businesses and assets worldwide. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Los Angeles, Ares is a publicly traded company on the NYSE (ticker: ARES) with operations across multiple continents.