Penn Foster is an online education provider serving individual learners and organizations with flexible, self-paced career training. Its accredited school and college offer diplomas, certificates, associate degrees, bachelor’s degrees, and high school programs across fields including healthcare, veterinary technology, skilled trades, business, information technology, criminal justice, and design. Penn Foster also develops workforce training solutions for employers seeking practical learning options for their teams.
Lead AI Software Engineer at Penn Foster (Remote, United States)
Lead AI engineering for Penn Foster Group’s online education platforms. Build retrieval, agentic, and full-stack systems that enhance learner and content-authoring experiences.
Description
- Set technical strategy and architecture for AI-powered learner and content-authoring products
- Build and ship full-stack systems with TypeScript, Vue.js, Node.js, PostgreSQL, and Azure
- Lead complex cross-functional initiatives from definition through delivery, adoption, and continuous improvement
- Create reusable patterns for retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows, model orchestration, prompt management, and human-in-the-loop experiences
- Develop evaluation frameworks, quality metrics, observability, and feedback loops for LLM features
- Integrate model APIs from Anthropic, OpenAI, and other providers
- Direct the technical development of AI-powered content-authoring and management capabilities
- Work with product, platform, design, data, and engineering teams to turn ambiguous problems into actionable plans and shippable systems
- Assess architectural risks and tradeoffs while balancing delivery speed, quality, maintainability, and long-term leverage
- Strengthen engineering standards through design and code reviews, documentation, operational standards, and development practices
- Mentor engineers across teams in AI-assisted development, context engineering, evaluation design, reliability, and agentic workflows
- Use agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or equivalent for planning, implementation, testing, and review
- Ensure production systems are scalable, observable, secure, accessible, and economically sustainable
- Contribute to organization-wide decisions on responsible AI adoption, technical standards, platform capabilities, and engineering priorities
Requirements
- At least 10 years of experience building and operating customer-facing software products
- Proven technical leadership as a staff engineer, principal engineer, tech lead, or in an equivalent role
- Strong full-stack foundations spanning browser technologies, TypeScript, Node.js, PostgreSQL, cloud infrastructure, and distributed systems
- Experience delivering AI products with LLMs, retrieval systems, evaluation frameworks, agentic workflows, or related technologies
- History of leading complex initiatives across multiple teams, systems, or organizational boundaries
- Ability to establish technical direction without formal authority and align engineers, product leaders, designers, and other stakeholders
- Sound architectural judgment and clear communication of complex tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences
- Experience creating durable engineering patterns, platforms, or capabilities that help other teams work more efficiently
- Product-minded approach focused on user experience, quality, speed, and measurable outcomes
- Comfort operating in ambiguous environments
- High ownership across strategy, architecture, implementation, and operational follow-through
- Experience mentoring engineers and improving engineering practices across a team or organization
- Commitment to reliable, secure, observable, and cost-effective AI systems
- Ability to work effectively in a remote, async-first environment
- Experience in a startup or high-bar engineering organization focused on meaningful, measurable impact
- Must live and work within the United States
- Willingness and ability to travel as needed
- Expected to remain on camera during meetings except in extenuating circumstances
- Successful completion of applicable pre-employment screening
- Completion of employment eligibility verification through Form I-9
Benefits
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- Flexible spending account
- Generous paid time off
- Sponsored volunteer opportunities
- 401(k) plan with company match
- Free access to Penn Foster Group’s online programs
- Occasional travel for team meetings, company events, conferences, summits, and similar activities