Lead AI Developer

New York, United States, New York Remote Full-time Lead

Base pay

$90K – $108K / year

Experience

9+ years

The roleWhat you’ll doWhat we’re looking forHow hiring worksAbout AwanaApply

The role

Founding-level, hands-on engineering role building production AI infrastructure and backend systems to power our client next phase of growth. Work directly with the CEO to design and ship asset pipelines, AI agents, metadata systems, search/recommendation, and enterprise delivery APIs.

What you’ll do

• Architect and build large-scale data pipelines for 3M+ assets
• Design and operate 24/7 production AI agents for metadata generation and enrichment
• Implement search, retrieval, and recommendation systems
• Build enterprise delivery APIs and integration infrastructure
• Create human-in-the-loop review and QA automation workflows
• Optimize AWS costs and scale cloud infrastructure

What we’re looking for

• AWS Bedrock
• Python
• Node.js
• TypeScript
• AI agents
• Data pipelines
• Distributed systems
• OpenSearch

Preferred: • Founding-level role with direct CEO partnership and high ownership

• Build production AI systems at large scale (millions of assets, 24/7 agents)
• Work with enterprise integrations for major platforms (Google, Adobe, Canva, Microsoft)

Required

AWS BedrockPythonNode.jsTypeScriptAI agentsData pipelinesDistributed systemsOpenSearchLambdaECSTerraformS3PostgreSQLKafkaVector searchEKS

Important

Golang

Nice to have

GolangDatabricksSnowflakeKafkaVector searchTerraformKubernetes

Requirements

Languages

EnglishSpanish

The team

Founding-level, small and fast-moving engineering team working directly with the CEO to architect and ship end-to-end AI infrastructure, agents, and delivery systems.

Team size: 15

How hiring works

Step 1 — Technical interview with the CEO (15–20 min); Step 2 — Scenario-based interview with the tech lead (problem-solving & past experience); Step 3 — Culture fit interview (sometimes skipped).

About Awana

our client is an AI-powered creative infrastructure company managing millions of images and templates across a global network of creatives and serving enterprise clients like Google, Adobe, Canva, and Microsoft.

Applications go to the hiring team

The essentials

Base pay

$90K – $108K / year

Employment

Full-time

Level

Lead

Location

New York, United States, New York

Work model

Remote

Visa sponsorship

Not offered

Team size

15

After you apply

• 1

  You get a confirmation email

  It carries a link to check this application any time. No account, no password.

• 2

  A person reads it

  Applications go straight to the hiring team, not to a keyword filter.

• 3

  If it fits, we reach out

  Usually to book a short intro call as the first step.

• 4

  Either way, you hear back

  Including when the answer is no.