Engineering Lead, AI Email Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Required - Work From Home
Next Step Systems Open · verified Oct 24, 2026 At a glance
Senior Engineering Leadership role at Next Step Systems. Remote, United States · full-time · $170,000–$190,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Set technical direction for backend, mobile and desktop work, shaping how AI workflows behave when steps fail or need retries
- Create the APIs and software layers that bring AI systems into usable product features
- Guide a small senior team with technical reviews and direct coaching while remaining involved in the code
- Choose between latency, reliability, cost, security and user experience when making architecture calls
- Build production practices around monitoring, testing and visibility, and work with ML leaders to deliver dependable features
What you bring
- AI experience is essential, including building products that use current ML or LLM capabilities
- You have led application or product engineering on complex systems
- You have shipped backend software in production and deep expertise in at least one platform area
Who this fits
This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can guide a small, senior engineering team and stay close to implementation. The position is fully remote and requires a 60-minute coding assessment.
From the employer
Engineering Lead, AI Email Applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Required - Work From Home
As the Engineering Lead, AI Email Applications, you own the engineering layer that turns Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability into a reliable product. You will shape the architecture across backend services, APIs, and client applications, while leading a small team of senior engineers. This is a hands-on leadership role. You stay close to the code, make critical architectural decisions, and ensure the system remains fast, reliable, and coherent as it scales. This position is 100% Remote.
MUST BE WILLING TO TAKE A 60 MINUTE CODING ASSESSMENT.
Engineering Lead 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.
Engineering Lead Outcomes:
- Production systems are observable, monitored, and stable under real-world load.
- Decisions consistently balance speed, cost, reliability, and user experience.
- Features across backend, mobile, and desktop work smoothly and reliably.
- Latency and reliability improve measurably over time.
Engineering Lead 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.
Benefits include medical insurance, Dental, Vision, Savings Plan Options, PTO, etc.
Keywords: San Francisco CA Jobs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, AI Email Applications, APIs, Backend, Desktop, Engineering Lead, IT Lead, LLM, Large Language Model, ML, Machine Learning, Mobile, Work From Home, Remote, California Recruiters, IT Jobs, California Recruiting
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Please check out all of our jobs at www.nextstepsystems.com.
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