Lead AI Engineer

About Metaforms Metaforms is redefining how market research gets done. Our AI platform empowers the world's leading research agencies to scale 10x faster while maintaining uncompromising quality. With AI Agents that augment survey programming, data processing, and project management, we help customers like Dynata, Savanta, and Borderless Access deliver more projects with less friction. 1,000+ surveys processed monthly Serving Fortune 500 companies across the globe Rapid month-over-month growth Series A funded and growing fast, we're aggressively scaling our AI engineering team to build the next generation of production-grade AI agent systems. The Role We're looking for a Lead AI Engineer based in Bangalore to own and grow the AI function at Metaforms, reporting directly to the Head of Engineering. This is a player-coach role. You'll lead a team of AI engineers — setting technical direction, establishing best practices, and ensuring delivery — while staying deeply hands-on yourself. You won't be managing from a distance; you'll be in the code, making architectural decisions, and solving hard problems alongside your team. If you're a strong AI engineer who's ready to take on the responsibility of building and leading a function, not just contributing to one, this role is for you. What You'll Own Team Leadership and Growth Lead, mentor, and grow a team of AI engineers, setting a high bar for technical quality and ownership Own hiring and onboarding for the AI function in close partnership with the Head of Engineering Run structured technical reviews, provide meaningful feedback, and develop engineers at different stages of their careers Foster a culture of experimentation, rigour, and continuous improvement within the team Technical Direction Define the technical roadmap for Metaforms' AI systems — evaluation infrastructure, agent architecture, model reliability, and data pipelines Make and own architectural decisions on LLM integration, prompt engineering strategy, fine-tuning approaches, and synthetic data generation Establish engineering standards, review processes, and documentation practices across the AI function Stay current with the state of the art in LLMs and agentic systems, and bring relevant advances into the team's work Hands-On Engineering Remain an active contributor — designing, building, and reviewing production AI systems, not just overseeing them Lead by example on the hardest technical problems: long-context handling, cascading error mitigation, model evaluation, and pipeline reliability Own critical architecture decisions end-to-end, from design through deployment and monitoring Cross-Functional Collaboration Work closely with the Head of Engineering, Product, and Forward Deployed Engineers to align AI capabilities with product and customer needs Translate customer and product requirements into clear technical direction for the AI team Surface risks, blockers, and tradeoffs early and communicate them clearly to leadership What We're Looking For Must-Have 7+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years focused on LLM systems or applied ML in production Prior experience leading or mentoring a team of engineers — formally or informally Deep hands-on expertise with LLMs, agent systems, evaluation frameworks, synthetic data pipelines, and AI system optimisation Strong architectural instincts: you can design systems that are reliable, observable, and maintainable at scale Solid Python skills; experience with Go or TypeScript a plus Proven ability to balance hands-on technical work with team leadership responsibilities Strong communication: able to explain technical decisions clearly to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders Nice to Have Experience building and scaling an AI or ML function at a SaaS company Background in semantic parsing, DSLs, or structured output models Hands-on experience with model monitoring, bias evaluation, or dataset management tooling Familiarity with market research workflows, survey platforms, or data-heavy enterprise SaaS Why Metaforms Own the AI function end-to-end — technical direction, team growth, and delivery accountability all sit with you Report directly to the Head of Engineering with a clear path to broader engineering leadership Work on production AI systems at real scale — 1,000+ research projects processed monthly by the systems you'll build and lead Small, senior team where your architectural decisions have lasting impact Well-funded and financially stable, with a clear roadmap and the runway to execute on it Benefits Full family health insurance $1,000 USD annual learning and development budget Dedicated mentor and coaching support Free snacks and dinner at the office