Technical Lead (Applied AI)

X by 2 is a technology consulting firm specializing in healthcare and insurance transformation. For over 25 years, we have partnered with leading organizations across North America — from strategy and architecture to system modernization, data analytics, and AI — delivering high-impact solutions from start to finish. We're agile, collaborative, and deeply committed to doing consulting the way it was meant to be done.

We are looking for a Technical Lead who will lead the design and development of AI solutions within enterprise environments for our clients. You'll combine hands-on engineering with leadership, guiding architecture decisions, mentoring teams, and building solutions.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Lead architecture, design, development, testing, and deployment of enterprise software solutions (applications, data, integration, AI agents, AI models)
• Participate in strategy and roadmap discussions, architecture definition, and technology evaluations
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and technical guidance
• Quickly evaluate and adopt new tools, technologies, and platforms to build prototypes and proofs-of-concept
• Drive adoption of AI solutions and collaborate with engineering teams, product leaders, and domain experts to deliver results

Software Engineering

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable, production-grade enterprise applications using modern languages and frameworks (Python, Java, C#, JavaScript)
• Define and enforce coding standards, best practices, and design patterns across the team
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and cloud-deployed services (AWS, Azure)
• Integrate enterprise systems via APIs, event-driven architectures, and messaging platforms
• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, technical debt, and system reliability issues

Data & Analytics

• Work with large, complex datasets and ensure data quality and integrity
• Analyze data to generate insights that inform both model development and broader solution strategy
• Collaborate with stakeholders to translate business problems into data-driven solutions

AI / Machine Learning Development

• Design, develop, and train machine learning and deep learning models for healthcare and insurance use cases
• Perform data modeling and feature engineering to support model development
• Develop custom model metrics and approaches tailored to specific business problems
• Ensure models are scalable, reliable, and integrated into production systems

Agentic AI Development

• Design and develop LLM-powered workflows and agentic systems that help users complete complex tasks, retrieve information, reason over enterprise data, or interact with internal systems.
• Integrate LLMs with tools, APIs, databases, documents, and enterprise platforms using patterns such as function calling, MCP, RAG, and structured tool use.
• Architect orchestration patterns for planning, task decomposition, memory, context management, and human-in-the-loop review where appropriate.
• Develop orchestration layers to manage agent planning, memory, task decomposition, and execution loops
• Evaluate agentic systems for correctness, reliability, safety, observability, auditability, and harden them for production readiness.
• Stay current with emerging AI frameworks and platforms, selecting tools pragmatically based on client needs.

Qualifications

Experience

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering designing and developing enterprise applications, data/analytics solutions, and/or integration solutions
• 1+ years of providing technical leadership as Tech Lead, Lead Engineer, or Architect
• 1+ years in developing AI agents and/or AI model development and training

Education

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Software Development, Software Engineering, or Computer Engineering
• (Optional) Master's Degree or Minor in AI/Machine Learning or Statistics

AI Engineering Skills (Two or More)

• Agentic AI: building and integrating autonomous AI agents using LLM APIs and orchestration frameworks (e.g., Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT, LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, MCP)
• Machine Learning & Deep Learning: developing and training models using standard ML/DL frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn)
• Data Engineering & Feature Engineering: building data pipelines, performing feature engineering, and ensuring data quality across large, complex datasets
• Context Engineering: Agentic SQL retrieval, MCP integration, agentic tool use, as well as vector databases & RAG techniques implementing retrieval-augmented generation patterns using vector stores (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, ChromaDB), .
• LLM Prompt Engineering & Fine-Tuning: designing and evaluating effective prompts, system instructions, and fine-tuning strategies for production LLM applications
• AI Evaluation & Production Readiness: defining evaluation methods, testing model behavior, monitoring performance, and addressing reliability, safety, explainability, and auditability concerns

What We're Looking For

• You move fluidly between writing code and leading a room — equally comfortable in a design review as you are in a pull request
• You have strong opinions about architecture and aren't afraid to share them, but you know when to listen and adapt
• You take ownership seriously — on small teams, your decisions have real impact and you're energized by that, not intimidated
• You're genuinely curious about AI, not just checking a box — you've experimented with agentic systems, LLMs, or ML tools on your own terms
• You communicate clearly with both engineers and non-technical stakeholders, and can translate complexity without dumbing it down

Location

• Metro Detroit or North Carolina Research Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill)
• Hybrid: flexibility to work remotely, but not fully remote
• Travel to X by 2 offices (Farmington Hills, MI) and client sites (within US) is required when requested

Work Environment and Culture

• Work alongside smart, collaborative people who continually challenge and invest in each other
• Partner with seasoned architects to solve hard problems and challenge assumptions
• Small teams mean real ownership, with growth and responsibilities driven purely by individual performance
• Everyone has a voice and is encouraged to shape the company by sharing their interests, ideas, and feedback

Compensation & Benefits

• Base salary $143K–$185K, depending on experience, plus profit sharing
• Annual raises and promotions based on performance
• 401(k) with employer match
• Comprehensive health, vision, dental, life, and disability insurance coverage, plus voluntary benefits and HSA with employer contribution
• Home Office Reimbursement, Health and Wellness Reimbursement, and Professional Dress Allowance
• Professional Self-Development Program
• Paid vacation, unlimited sick days (as needed), and holidays
• Company-sponsored social events and an employee recognition rewards program

Sound Like You?

We're not looking for someone who has done everything — we're looking for someone who is driven to. If you thrive in environments where you can move fast, go deep, and make a real difference for clients solving complex problems in healthcare and insurance, we'd love to hear from you.