Software Engineering Lead (AI)
Location: Cork, Ireland (on-site)
Type: Full-time, Permanent
About the company
A fast-growing, IDA-backed industrial technology company building out its engineering presence in Cork. The business operates at the forefront of emerging technology, with AI already shipping in production across its platform - not early-stage experimentation.
About the role
We're looking for a hands-on Software Engineering Lead to run our AI engineering function. This is a technical leadership role, not a purely managerial one - you'll still be writing code, running PoCs, and validating architecture, while setting technical direction, hiring the team, and raising the engineering bar across the group.
Responsibilities
- Lead the technical direction of a high-impact AI engineering team, staying hands-on
- Design and deliver cloud-native, container-first services built to scale
- Take AI-enabled capabilities from early exploration through to secure, production deployments
- Write high-quality Python code and define the engineering bar for maintainability and testing
- Drive good engineering practices across CI/CD, containerisation, Kubernetes, and cloud operations
- Play a central role in hiring and building the team
- Mentor and coach engineers through reviews, pairing, and technical feedback
Requirements
- Strong professional software engineering background (typically 10+ years, though impact and evidence of delivery matter more than a specific number)
- Proven technical leadership - leading design discussions, mentoring, setting direction
- Strong Python engineering skills: OOP, typing, async programming, FastAPI preferred
- Demonstrated experience building REST APIs and service integrations
- Cloud experience on at least one hyperscaler (Azure preferred), with strong container experience
- Kubernetes experience strongly preferred
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices
- Strong testing discipline (PyTest) and code review habits
- Understanding of AuthN/AuthZ fundamentals (OpenID/OAuth2)
Nice to have
- Experience building with Generative AI or Agentic AI frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, Hugging Face)
- Familiarity with event-driven architecture
- Azure platform depth (Cosmos DB, serverless)
- Interest in modern AI concepts (transformers, attention, deep learning foundations)
GCS is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.
AI Software Engineering Lead
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