Lead AI Engineer

Salary: Circa $170K + Super

Cadence Connect is partnering with an innovative and fast-growing technology business to recruit a hands-on Lead AI Engineer.

This is a unique opportunity to help shape how software is built using AI-powered development and autonomous coding agents.

This is not a traditional Lead Engineer position. You’ll play a key role in designing and implementing an AI-driven software delivery pipeline, where well-defined product requirements can be transformed into tested, reviewable and deployable code.

You’ll remain highly hands-on, building the tooling, processes and engineering practices that allow AI coding agents to work effectively while maintaining strong standards around quality, security and reliability.

You’ll also lead a small engineering team, helping shift their focus from writing every line of code to specifying, orchestrating, testing and reviewing AI-generated software.

What you'll be doing:

• Design and build AI-assisted software delivery and developer tooling
• Establish engineering standards for agent-generated code
• Improve PRD quality, automated testing and code review processes
• Build reliable CI/CD pipelines and safe deployment practices
• Own quality, performance, security and platform reliability
• Introduce testing strategies including automated, mutation and integration testing
• Lead and mentor a small distributed engineering team
• Measure delivery performance and continuously improve engineering practices
• Experiment with emerging AI development technologies and workflows

What we're looking for:

• Experience leading software development in a start-up or fast-paced product environment
• Proven hands-on experience using AI/agentic coding tools to deliver production software
• Strong C# and .NET Core experience
• Strong software architecture, design patterns and systems engineering skills
• Deep experience with automated testing and CI/CD
• AWS and cloud automation experience
• Excellent written communication and specification skills
• Working knowledge of React Native and Expo
• Relevant degree or equivalent experience

This is a genuinely progressive engineering role where you’ll have the opportunity to define how AI-assisted software development operates within a growing technology business.

If you're an experienced engineer or technical lead who is excited about the practical application of AI in software engineering then we would love to hear from you.