AI Data Scientist Team Lead

Location: Work from home (Pennsylvania) Shift: Days (United States of America) Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40 Worker Type: Regular Exemption Status: Yes Job Summary: The AI Data Scientist Team Lead (Manager, AI Platform Engineering) architects end-to-end AI solutions and leads the AI Platform team for Meridian Softworks 's AI Department. This is a hands-on technical leadership role, splitting time equally between solution architecture and engineering management (50% technical / 50% leadership). On the technical side, the Team Lead serves as the solution architect across the AI Platform portfolio: gathering requirements from clinical informaticists, data scientists, and business stakeholders; designing production-grade AI architectures spanning batch and real-time workloads; and making build-vs-buy calls for emerging AI capabilities. On the management side, the Team Lead runs the team's rituals, removes blockers, develops direct reports, and manages stakeholder expectations. The AI Platform team is an enabling team—not a delivery team—that builds the reusable capabilities, tooling, and infrastructure that let product teams deploy AI safely and quickly. The team consists of 8 engineers across 6 distinct roles (4 direct reports + 3 matrixed engineers from partner departments), currently supporting 10 platform capabilities serving 70 AI programs. The Team Lead owns the team's capability roadmap, capacity allocation, platform engineering standards, and architecture reviews, while translating organizational AI strategy into executable technical plans that deliver production-grade capabilities across the portfolio. Job Duties: ​What You Will Own: Solution architecture across all platform capabilities (agentic AI systems, RAG pipelines, multi-model orchestration, real-time and batch ML infrastructure) Requirements gathering and technical specification for AI programs across clinical and operational domains Build-vs-buy and technology selection decisions for emerging AI capabilities, including generative AI, foundation models, and LLM applications Platform engineering standards, architecture reviews, and governance compliance (HIPAA, AI risk management, responsible AI principles) Team roadmap, capacity allocation, and intake triage for platform support requests People management, career development, and performance evaluation for 4 direct reports (3 MLOps Engineers, 1 Full Stack Engineer) Work direction, priorities, platform standards, and formal performance input for 3 matrixed engineers from partner departments (Sr. Platform Data Engineer, Sr. Software Engineer for Integration & Interfaces, Sr. Platform Engineer) What You Will Not Own: Individual capability delivery (delegated to the team via RACI) Product strategy or portfolio prioritization (owned by the AI Product Management function) Discipline-specific technical standards (set department-wide by the MLOps and Data Science Technical Discipline Leads; set by home-department tech leads for matrixed engineers) HR management or final performance evaluations for matrixed engineers (owned by their home departments) Day-to-day Databricks workspace administration (owned by the Sr. Platform Data Engineer) Solution Architecture Responsibilities (50% Technical): Design scalable AI architectures spanning batch and real-time workloads, ensuring solutions are production-grade, maintainable, and aligned with organizational priorities Gather and refine requirements from clinical informaticists, data scientists, and business stakeholders; translate complex needs into actionable technical specifications Architect agentic AI systems, RAG pipelines, and multi-model orchestration frameworks across clinical and operational domains Serve as technical authority on end-to-end AI pipeline design across Databricks, cloud-native platforms, and Epic integration points Drive build-vs-buy and technology selection decisions for emerging AI capabilities (generative AI, foundation models, LLM applications) Ensure AI systems adhere to healthcare security standards (HIPAA), AI governance frameworks, and responsible AI principles Partner with data architects and governance teams to enforce data quality, lineage, and access controls across AI data assets Engineering Management Responsibilities (50% Leadership): Lead multiple concurrent AI projects; manage scope, timelines, and technical risk while removing obstacles for the team Mentor and develop 4 direct-report engineers; provide technical leadership and formal performance input for 3 matrixed engineers Establish platform engineering best practices, conduct architecture reviews, and foster engineering excellence across the full team Align technical execution with strategic goals; contribute data-driven insights to inform organizational AI initiatives Coordinate cross-functional collaboration between the AI Platform team and data scientists, software engineers, clinical informaticists, and business stakeholders Champion scalable and governed AI practices acro