Lead AI Engineer (Hybrid) – Cape Town

About the role

This senior position leads AI engineering for a global wellness and health‑tech brand serving over one million consumers. Based in Cape Town, the role combines hands‑on development with technical leadership to deliver AI‑driven products that improve customer experience and drive business growth.

Key responsibilities

• Design, build and ship end‑to‑end AI solutions, owning complex work and making key architectural decisions.
• Partner with product, marketing, operations and finance teams to translate business challenges into AI projects.
• Define and manage the AI roadmap for one or more domains, ensuring initiatives are sequenced and resourced for impact.
• Mentor engineers and data scientists, enforce engineering standards, and lead code reviews.
• Ensure AI solutions comply with governance, privacy and ethical frameworks.
• Stay current with AI advancements and incorporate relevant innovations.

Required profile

• 10+ years of experience in applied data science, machine‑learning engineering or software engineering with senior/lead responsibilities.
• Proven track record delivering production‑grade AI/ML systems, not just prototypes.
• Experience leading cross‑functional AI initiatives and coordinating delivery teams.
• Background in a B2C environment, preferably in customer analytics, personalization, recommendation or conversational AI.
• Demonstrated ability to shape AI roadmaps in partnership with product and business leaders.

Required skills

• Python and SQL programming.
• Databricks platform (preferred).
• Machine‑learning frameworks such as scikit‑learn, XGBoost, PyTorch, TensorFlow, LightGBM.
• Experience with large language models, prompt engineering and generative AI APIs.
• Data‑engineering fundamentals: ETL/ELT pipelines, data warehouses/lakes, job orchestration.
• MLOps tools: model registries, CI/CD pipelines, containerisation, monitoring.
• Cloud platforms – Azure (preferred), AWS or GCP.