About Cadre AI
Cadre AI is an AI strategy and integration firm that builds production AI systems for B2B companies in private equity, wholesale lending, real estate, and SaaS. We don’t build decks about what AI could do. We ship systems that move revenue, compress costs, and automate the work that used to take entire teams.
The Role
The Head of AI Engineering is the senior-most technical leader at Cadre AI’s Colombia engineering hub. You own all engineering delivery. Not oversight—ownership. You are accountable for what ships, how it’s built, and whether it works in production.
This role blends deep technical expertise with people leadership and direct client engagement. You will lead a high-performing team of AI, ML, and data engineers while personally setting the technical bar. You’ll turn ambitious client goals into scalable, production-ready AI systems—and build the processes, platforms, and culture needed to operate at scale.
This is not a managing-from-a-distance role. You are hands-on, client-facing, and deeply embedded in the work.
What You’ll Do
Own Engineering Delivery End-to-End
- Own all engineering deliverables across Cadre AI—quality, scalability, and on-time execution are your responsibility
- Lead and manage the full engineering organization: AI Engineers, ML Engineers, MLOps, and Data Engineers
- Establish and run Agile/Scrum processes: sprints, backlog grooming, ticketing, and release planning
- Build a culture of accountability, experimentation, and continuous improvement
Define and Drive AI/ML Strategy
- Establish frameworks that integrate generative AI into engineering workflows—boosting team productivity and output quality
- Define and standardize best practices across the AI/ML lifecycle, from experimentation through deployment and monitoring
- Evaluate experiments, document findings, select winning approaches, and roll them out team-wide
- Architect and oversee a full ML platform: infrastructure, scalability, reliability, and rapid iteration
Lead Technically, Not Just Organizationally
- Contribute directly to system architecture and key technical decisions—you are a hands-on subject matter expert
- Design and build scalable, end-to-end ML solutions for predictions, recommendations, search, and growth systems
- Oversee model training, optimization, deployment, and performance monitoring
- Drive data excellence: clean pipelines, strong governance, and actionable insights across the organization
Engage Clients and Shape Solutions
- Join client calls as a senior technical voice, shaping solutions and building trust with stakeholders
- Partner with product managers and business leaders to translate business objectives into technical roadmaps
- Present trade-offs clearly—clients should understand what’s being built and why it will move their business
Build and Develop the Team
- Hire, coach, and mentor top-tier AI-first engineers and engineering leaders
- Establish clear career paths, feedback loops, and performance standards
- Scale the AI function across MLE, MLOps, and Data Engineering as Cadre grows
Who You Are
- 10+ years of engineering experience, with significant and proven leadership responsibility
- Track record managing large engineering teams in fast-moving, high-accountability environments
- Deep expertise in AI/ML systems—generative AI, model training, and production deployment
- Strong command of Agile/Scrum and the operational discipline to run a high-output engineering org
- You have architected and scaled ML platforms and data infrastructure, not just contributed to them
- Comfortable being client-facing and translating complex technical concepts into business value
Technical Skills
- Machine Learning, Generative AI, and model optimization
- MLOps, CI/CD, and ML lifecycle management
- Cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure)
- Data engineering, pipelines, and analytics
- Scalable system design and architecture
Leadership Traits
- Builder mindset with a bias toward action—you don’t wait for permission to solve problems
- Exceptional communicator who can align engineers, clients, and executives in the same conversation
- Strategic thinker who can still dive deep technically when the situation demands it
- Passionate about developing people and building teams that outlast any single project
- Comfortable operating in ambiguity and moving fast without sacrificing quality
What Sets You Apart
- Former founder, early engineering leader, or someone who has operated like one inside a larger org—you know what it means to own the whole problem
- Track record of deploying AI systems that moved a business KPI, not just a model metric. You can point to the revenue gained, the cost saved, or the time eliminated
- Experience in consulting, professional services, or client-facing technical leadership where you had to earn trust and deliver under pressure
- You’ve built and scaled engineering organizations, not just managed them—you know how to hire for culture, not just credentials
- Active in the AI community. You write, speak, or build in public. You’re a practitioner, not a spectator
Why Cadre AI
- Real ownership. You will shape the technical direction of a fast-growing AI engineering organization—not maintain someone else’s roadmap
- High-impact work. The systems you build move revenue, compress costs, and change how businesses operate
- AI-native culture. We don’t just build AI for clients. We use it to run our own operations. You’ll work with people who are as obsessed with the tools as you are
- Access to the frontier. Through partnerships with Anthropic, OpenAI, and YC, you’ll be among the first to experiment with new models and capabilities
- Upside. We’re bootstrapped, profitable, and growing fast. Early team members share in the success they help create
- No bureaucracy. Small pods. Clear accountability. The best idea wins, regardless of who says it
Cadre AI is building the future of how companies adopt and operate AI. We believe the best AI systems come from leaders who understand both the technology and the business it serves. If that’s how you think, we want to talk.
Compensation
The base pay range for this role is $7,000 – $8,000 per month.