Chief Software Engineer - AI-Powered, Python

We are looking for a Chief Software Engineer to build a next-generation AI-powered financial assistant platform that brings chat, reporting, and bespoke interfaces into sophisticated investment workflows. You will lead hands-on delivery in a small, highly capable team, shaping product direction while iterating quickly with business users.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of an AI-powered financial assistant from design through production rollout

• Define system designs that balance quality, latency, reliability, and cost for AI features

• Build backend services and APIs in Python using FastAPI to support chat and reporting workflows

• Implement AI evaluation and quality engineering with automated tests, regression suites, and monitoring

• Establish security controls for AI applications including privacy, access control, auditability, and safe handling of sensitive data

• Validate and harden AI behavior in production through failure analysis and iterative improvements

• Collaborate directly with business users to gather requirements, refine UX, and ship rapid iterations

• Review, test, and verify AI-generated code using Gen AI assisted development and coding agents

• Create guardrails against prompt-injection and other AI-specific risks within production constraints

• Improve reliability and maintainability through disciplined engineering practices and clear interfaces

• Contribute to a startup-style environment with lightweight process and high accountability

• Partner with other senior engineers to align technical decisions and deliver cohesive platform outcomes

Requirements

• 7+ years of software engineering experience with Python or comparable languages

• Strong leadership ability to drive technical direction in a small senior team

• Strong ownership mindset to take loosely defined problems from discovery to production

• Expert system design skills including edge cases, trade-offs, and scalable architectures

• Advanced Python skills including API and service development

• Strong FastAPI experience or deep experience with comparable Python web frameworks

• Strong AI engineering skills with Large Language Models (LLM) and Gen AI Assisted Development

• Strong AI evaluation skills including automated evals, test datasets, regression testing, and failure analysis

• Strong AI security knowledge including data privacy, access controls, prompt-injection risks, and guardrails

• Strong quality engineering mindset focused on reliability, maintainability, and monitoring in production

• Strong performance optimization skills across latency, cost, and throughput for AI applications

• High autonomy and self-governance with minimal process and high trust

• Advanced English proficiency (C1, Advanced)

• Flexibility to collaborate across US, LatAm, and CET time zones

• Willingness to learn and adopt new technologies rapidly as the AI ecosystem evolves

Nice to have

• Amazon Web Services experience

• Kubernetes experience

• Terraform experience

• ReactJS or Next.js experience with TypeScript/JavaScript

• Node.js experience

We offer

• International projects with top brands

• Work with global teams of highly skilled, diverse peers

• Healthcare benefits

• Employee financial programs

• Paid time off and sick leave

• Upskilling, reskilling and certification courses

• Unlimited access to the LinkedIn Learning library and 22,000+ courses

• Global career opportunities

• Volunteer and community involvement opportunities

• EPAM Employee Groups

• Award-winning culture recognized by Glassdoor, Newsweek and LinkedIn