Lead AI Software Architect

We are hiring Lead AI Software Architect to serve as the technical backbone of our computational platform. The role owns end-to-end architecture for our AI/ML systems, software services, knowledge and memory infrastructure, and cloud platform — scaling across performance, data volume, model complexity, and the number of scientific teams who depend on it. It requires tight alignment between AI pipelines, services, data layers, and infrastructure, with decisions made in full awareness of cost, latency, security, reliability, and operational risk.

This is an execution-focused role that designs, builds, and ships systems rather than reviewing from a distance. You will build critical-path components and reference implementations, work directly across backend, platform, AI, and infrastructure codebases, lead engineering quality, and resolve complex production issues.

The role also acts as the technical reference point and mentor for the AI Platform Team (approximately ten engineers today), with a clear growth path into formal engineering leadership as team dynamics develop and contribution warrants.

End-to-End Architecture

• Own the architecture for the platform end-to-end: AI/ML systems, software services, data and knowledge layers, and cloud infrastructure.
• Make trade-offs explicit between speed, complexity, maintainability, cost, latency, reliability, and security.
• Anticipate and prevent failure modes in distributed systems, AI-heavy platforms, and cloud-native architectures.
• Lead architecture reviews focused on resilience and future scale. Identify bottlenecks early and act on them.

AI System Lifecycle Ownership

• Own AI architecture across the full model lifecycle: training, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, data ingestion, labeling, feature pipelines, inference orchestration, and performance optimization.
• Design scalable, observable, production-ready AI systems.
• Proactively avoid common pitfalls: data leakage, brittle pipelines, silent model degradation, scalability bottlenecks, undetected drift.
• Build multi-agent systems, retrieval and knowledge graph layers, model gateways, and evaluation harnesses that the broader team builds on.

Hands-on Engineering Delivery

• Build critical-path components and reference implementations across backend services, AI/ML pipelines, knowledge systems, and infrastructure.
• Lead complex debugging and incident response on production systems.
• Code, ship, and own outcomes. This is not a review-from-a-distance role.

Technical Leadership and Architectural Governance

• Act as the reference point for complex technical decisions across AI, software, and platform.
• Mentor engineers through reviews, pairing, walkthroughs, and retrospectives. Raise the technical bar without becoming a bottleneck.

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• Define principles, standards, and best practices. Review major changes pragmatically — ensure consistency while allowing evolution.
• Evaluate new technologies with a production-first mindset.
• Support hiring, onboarding, and team scaling. Grow into formal engineering management as the team grows.

Cross-functional Partnership

• Work alongside scientific leads in antibody engineering, computational biology, and biology operations to identify where engineering can unlock research velocity.
• Translate scientific bottlenecks into platform capabilities that compound across therapeutic programs.

Essential Skills & Expertise – The core you need to succeed in this role: 

• Proven experience as a Senior, Lead, Principal, or Staff Engineer / Architect on shipped production systems, with the ability to design and build end-to-end systems independently.
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant production work on AI/ML systems or AI-heavy data platforms.
• Deep experience with distributed systems, service-oriented architectures, cloud-native platforms, backend systems, and APIs.
• Strong understanding of production AI/ML system architecture: model lifecycle, inference orchestration, evaluation, monitoring, and the operational realities of ML in production.
• Track record of technical leadership and mentorship; experience scaling systems and teams.
• Strong written and verbal technical communication.
• This role codes, builds, and ships. Ownership under pressure and comfort with fast iteration and real-world constraints are non-negotiable.

Highly Valued Skills & Expertise – What will make you stand out in this role:: 

• Experience in biotech, pharma, healthcare, or scientific computing.
• Hands-on experience with AI-heavy or data-intensive platforms.
• Experience building internal developer platforms used by multiple teams.
• Production experience with modern agent frameworks (LangGraph, Agno, CrewAI, AutoGen, or equivalents), knowledge graphs (Neo4j, ArangoDB, or similar), or model gateway / inference orchestration infrastructure.
• Familiarity with regulated R&D or GxP-adjacent environments (becomes relevant as therapeutic programs mature).

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• Prior founding-engineer or early-platform-team experience at a startup that scaled.

Here, growth and success aren’t just about technical expertise only; our culture is built on the mix between the mindset, collaboration, and making a real impact.

And this is how we define our culture of success, growth & showing up everyday aligned with Proteinea's 8-competency framework.

• Technical Mastery — Deep production engineering experience across AI/ML systems, distributed services, and platform architecture. Moves comfortably between debugging a flaky inference pipeline and designing how systems fit together.
• Ownership & Accountability — Ships under pressure. Owns outcomes, not just outputs. Comfortable with ambiguity and real-world constraints.
• Analytical Judgment — Evaluates trade-offs between speed, complexity, cost, and long-term maintenance. Avoids both over-engineering and brittle short-cuts.
• Team Development — Raises the bar around them through reviews, mentorship, and clear communication. Excited about growing into formal team leadership.
• Curiosity — Engages substantively with scientific problems. Comfortable working at the intersection of engineering and biology, without needing a bench-science background.
• Adaptability & Resilience — Operates effectively in a fast-iterating startup environment with evolving priorities.
• Collaboration & Respect — Effective partner to engineers, scientists, and leadership. Productive disagreement, not political maneuvering.
• Integrity — Honest about the state of code, the state of systems, and the limits of one's own knowledge.
  

As a part of being part of the team, we support you along the way by providing: 

Mission-Driven Science: Contribute to science that’s reshaping drug discovery, solving real challenges relevant to MENA and beyond;

Top Tier Salary: Competitive pay in global currency, rewarding the work you do every day;

Flexible Time Off: Flexible Paid-Time Off, paid shutdowns, and space for the life that happens outside of work;

Health Coverage: For both you and your family; so stress has one less reason to show up;

Housing & Relocation Support: Not just to get you here, but to help you settle in and connect more deeply with the team and community;

Global Scale & Local Leadership: Work alongside curious, driven, and collaborative teams, where Egypt is the engine room of our innovation; 

Life-Friendly Perks: Perks mainly designed to make it easier to thrive at work and in life.