Lead AI Platform Engineer

We are seeking a Lead AI Platform Engineer to lead the design and evolution of a next-generation AI Gateway platform that enables secure, scalable and governed access to Large Language Models (LLMs) and agentic workflows across the enterprise in a SAAS environment. This role owns the end-to-end architecture covering MCP (Model Context Protocol), agents, multi-provider LLM integrations, authentication and authorization, semantic caching, rate limiting, guardrails and reusable frameworks for agent and tool development.

Responsibilities

• Develop the AI Gateway platform, including MCP, agents, LLM routing, governance and observability
• Translate business and product requirements into clear problem statements, architectural designs and scalable technical solutions
• Design extensible frameworks for MCP server capabilities and integrations as well as agent orchestration and reusable agent skills
• Architect gateway capabilities such as semantic caching for LLM responses, rate limiting, quotas and traffic governance and guardrails and validation layers for safe LLM/MCP usage
• Design and review authentication and authorization models, including multiple OIDC-based flows, identity propagation and token-based access control for MCP and LLM traffic
• Build prototypes and reference implementations to validate architectural decisions and guide engineering teams
• Partner with multiple product teams integrating with the AI Gateway, providing architecture guidance, best practices and integration patterns
• Review designs and code, providing actionable feedback to ensure quality, performance, scalability and security
• Define and review CI/CD best practices using modern GitHub-based pipelines
• Architect and review Kubernetes-based deployment models, ensuring scalability, resiliency and production readiness

Requirements

• 5+ years of software engineering experience
• Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale distributed systems or platform products
• Proficiency in Golang and Python
• Familiarity with AI-centric development with a strong emphasis on quality gates and architecture patterns to enforce agentic behavior in producing quality code
• Deep understanding of AI gateways, AI/LLM platforms or middleware systems, including routing, governance and scalability
• Experience with microservices and service-oriented architectures for multi-tenant SAAS environments, PostgreSQL for transactional data and Redis for caching and distributed coordination
• Strong background in authentication and authorization systems, particularly OAuth-based approaches
• Demonstrated ability to independently drive problem definition, architecture, prototype and execution guidance
• Experience designing platforms and frameworks used by multiple product teams
• English proficiency at B2 level or higher

Nice to have

• Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol), agentic platforms or AI orchestration frameworks
• Knowledge or know-how in working with EDA software
• Prior work on LLM gateways, API gateways or AI middleware platforms
• Experience building generic developer frameworks or SDKs adopted across teams
• Familiarity with guardrails, semantic caching, prompt/response optimization and LLM cost control techniques

Benefits

We connect like-minded people

• Delivering innovative solutions to industry leaders, making a global impact
• Enjoyable working environment, whether it is the vibrant office or the comfort of your home
• Opportunity to work abroad for up to two months per year
• Relocation opportunities within our offices in 55+ countries
• Corporate and social events

We invest in your growth

• Leadership development, career advising, soft skills and well-being programs
• Certifications, including GCP, Azure and AWS
• Unlimited access to EPAM's internal learning database
• Free English classes with certified teachers

We cover it all

• Participation in the Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Monetary bonuses for engaging in the referral program
• Comprehensive medical & family care package
• Four trust days per year for personal needs
• Discounts for fitness clubs
• Benefits package (hotels, restaurants, stores and services)