KIS Solutions

Tech Lead (AI-First Product)

KIS Solutions  •  Remote  •  2 months ago
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Job Description


This is a remote position.


We are looking for a highly capable Tech Lead to design and deliver an AI-enabled product from scratch in an environment where requirements may initially be unclear or incomplete.

This role requires someone who combines strong software engineering fundamentals, product thinking, and hands-on experience building systems powered by LLMs or other AI technologies.

The ideal candidate is comfortable operating in a small company environment, working directly with stakeholders to transform ambiguous business needs into scalable technical solutions.

This is a highly hands-on role requiring strong autonomy, pragmatic decision-making, and the ability to structure messy problem spaces.


Job Activities


  • Design and implement scalable architectures for AI-enabled products, including LLM integrations, structured workflows (e.g., classification, extraction, reasoning), and RAG or embedding-based solutions.

  • Define technical direction and make pragmatic technology decisions, balancing speed, quality, cost, and reliability, while ensuring maintainability and strong engineering standards.

  • Evaluate and improve AI system performance through structured feedback loops, guardrails, and fallback strategies.

  • Collaborate closely with stakeholders to translate ambiguous business needs into clear technical solutions, influencing product roadmap and prioritization.

  • Own delivery by breaking down complex initiatives, coordinating team efforts, and ensuring timely execution of key milestones.

  • Lead by example through hands-on development, code reviews, and mentorship, fostering a high-quality and scalable engineering culture.

  • Continuously improve processes, documentation, and development workflows to support team efficiency and growth.


Requirements


  • Strong experience as a Tech Lead or Senior Engineer, with the ability to design scalable systems from scratch across modern web architectures (frontend and backend).

  • Solid expertise in API design, database modeling, software architecture patterns, and scalability fundamentals.

  • Hands-on experience integrating LLM APIs into production systems, with a strong understanding of prompting strategies, structured AI workflows, and concepts such as RAG, embeddings, semantic search, and tool/function calling.

  • Ability to evaluate and optimize trade-offs between model performance, cost, and latency, while ensuring reliability through guardrails and structured output strategies.

  • Strong product and problem-solving mindset, with the ability to identify gaps, structure ambiguous problems, and make decisions with incomplete information.

  • Excellent communication skills, able to simplify complex technical concepts and effectively align with non-technical stakeholders, including negotiating scope and priorities.


Nice to Have


  • Experience with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot) and proven ability to increase development velocity using AI.

  • Experience in early-stage startups or small teams, including launching v1 products and improving undefined or unstructured processes.

  • Experience working closely with founders or executive stakeholders.
KIS Solutions

About KIS Solutions

Too often corporate IT teams and business counterparts are at odds. This is in large part because technologists too often focus on the technology solution itself rather than the underlying business problem. At KIS solutions we believe that technology is a tool to solve business problems. We focus on the business problem and operational processes which our solutions support.

When building technology systems, the most challenging part of the development process is often deciding “what to build” not “how to build it”. It is sadly true however that many corporate IT teams spend so much their time focusing on the “how” rather than the “what”. Once you have answered the challenging questions around “what to build”, the rest falls into place. Building the system should be simple!

Founder Benjamin Quintana is an IT professional and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience delivering impactful solutions across a broad range of industries. Ben has extensive experience with customer data analytics, data cleansing, customer identification, customer preference management, call center and logistical systems. He also has deep industry expertise in loyalty marketing applications and was directly responsible for the infrastructure of the loyalty program of a leading hotel group.

Industry
IT & Software
Company Size
51-200 employees
Headquarters
Bellingham, WA
Year Founded
2012
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