Expert Senior Manager, AI Engineering

About the role

Bain’s AI, Insights & Solutions (AIS) team works with clients to design and deliver AI-powered solutions that create measurable business impact. You’ll operate in multidisciplinary teams alongside Bain consultants, other experts in product, design, architecture and engineering, and client stakeholders, translating ambiguous business problems into robust AI applications that can be piloted, scaled, and adopted.

Impact you’ll have

The Expert Senior Manager / Associate Partner AI Engineer will architect, build, and scale next-generation generative AI systems and agentic solutions for Bain’s clients. As a leader in the practice, you will sit at the intersection of advanced engineering, applied AI research, product strategy, and responsible AI governance. You will own the full lifecycle — from research and experimentation to production deployment and ongoing optimization — and guide teams across engineering, product, data science, ethics, and client stakeholders.

What you'll do

• Design, build, and deploy end-to-end generative AI systems, including multi-agent workflows and production-grade AI applications.
• Architect multi-component pipelines, including:
  • Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
  • Fine-tuning and parameter-efficient tuning
  • Embedding generation and optimization
  • Hybrid retrieval strategies (vector, graph, keyword)
  • Integrate reasoning, tool use, function calling, and orchestration across complex workflows
  • Engineer advanced agentic systems, ensuring clear separation of concerns, robust memory architecture, and scalable tool ecosystems
  • Lead everything from early-stage research, model experimentation, and evaluation design to production system deployment
  • Oversee API development, microservices, CI/CD pipelines, observability, and cloud-native deployment
  • Build scalable GenAIOps processes for automated testing, regression evaluation, latency monitoring, and continual improvement
  • Balance performance, safety, responsible AI principles, and cost across system design
  • Implement guardrails, fallbacks, red-teaming strategies, and human-in-the-loop (HITL) workflows
  • Partner with global ethics teams to ensure alignment with Bain’s Responsible AI standards
  • Design and implement evaluation frameworks covering:
    • Hallucination rate and factual consistency
    • Relevance and precision/recall
    • Latency, throughput, and system-level performance
    • Cost tracking and efficiency
    • Partner closely with product, engineering, data science, ethics, and infrastructure teams to build robust, compliant AI systems
    • Act as a thought partner to executives and clients on AI strategy, architecture decisions, emerging capabilities, and implementation roadmaps
    • Mentor and upskill technical teams on best practices including RAG, agents, prompt engineering, and AI safety

Qualifications

• 8–12+ years in software engineering, ML engineering, or applied AI roles with significant hands-on building responsibilities
• Demonstrated experience leading complex, multi-stack generative AI programs from conception through production
• Strong executive communication skills with the ability to translate highly technical concepts to business stakeholders
• Track record of leading engineering teams, mentoring technical talent, and collaborating with diverse cross-functional groups
• Advanced prompt engineering, context engineering, and conversation design
• Strong expertise in evaluation design, experimentation frameworks, and data labeling strategies for LLM apps
• Deep experience with:
  • Advanced RAG architectures (vector, hybrid, graph-based retrieval)
  • Agentic architectures (multi-agent systems, tool selection, routing, memory, planning, reflection)
  • ReAct, RLAIF, and other HITL + feedback loops
  • .AI-Specific Tools & Frameworks - Orchestration frameworks, Vector and graph databases and Model + API ecosystems
  • System design, architecture, and production-grade deployment
  • Deep familiarity with cost optimization and computational tradeoffs for LLM workloads
  • Comfort operating in high-ambiguity environments with collaborative cross-functional teams
  • Clear ability to lead, mentor, and inspire technical teams
  • Experience in client-facing consulting or enterprise transformation environments is a strong plus

Working model & travel

This role requires a minimum of three days per week working together in person, either at a client location or at your Bain home office. Travel is required beyond your home office / primary working location. Frequency and destination vary by project needs.

Career progression

Bain offers significant learning and growth opportunities through the breadth and depth of problems we solve, the level of impact we help clients achieve, and our apprenticeship model. You will learn while doing, with support from other experienced teammates, frequent feedback, and increasing responsibility over time.

Compensation

Bain & Company's comprehensive benefits and wellness program is designed to help employees achieve personal independence, protection and stability in the areas most important to you and your family. Bain pays 100% individual employee premiums for medical, dental and vision programs, offering one of the most comprehensive medical plans for employees without impacting your paycheck. Generous paid time off, including parental leave, sick leave and paid holidays. Fully vested 401(k) company contribution. Paid Life and Long-Term Disability insurance. Annual fitness reimbursements.