Engineering Manager, AI Platforms

Overview About Suffolk   Suffolk is a national enterprise that builds, innovates, and invests. We provide value across the entire project lifecycle through our core construction management services and complementary business lines in real estate investment, design, self-perform construction, and technology start-up investment (Suffolk Technologies). By integrating data, artificial intelligence, and advanced technology through our Seamless Platform, we connect design, construction, and operations to deliver smarter, more predictable results and redefine how America builds.  Suffolk – America’s Contractor – is a national company with more than $9 billion in annual revenue, 3,000 employees, and 17 offices, including Boston (headquarters), New York City, Miami, West Palm Beach, Tampa, Estero, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Herndon, U.S. Virgin Islands, and other key markets. Suffolk manages some of the most complex and transformative projects in the country, serving clients across healthcare, life sciences, education, gaming, aviation, transportation, government, mission critical, and commercial sectors. Suffolk is privately held and is led by founder, chairman and CEO John Fish. Suffolk is ranked #8 on ENR’s list of “Top CM-at-Risk Contractors.” For more information, visit www.suffolk.com and follow Suffolk on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.  At Suffolk, we believe that our total rewards program should offer you and your family the support you need when it matters most. That’s why we have created a program that provides employees with access to a wide variety of options that can be personalized to support you and your loved ones physically, emotionally, and financially.  Benefits include, competitive salaries, auto allowances and gas cards for certain roles, access to market leading medical and emotional and mental health benefits, dental, and vision insurance plans, virtual care options for physical therapy and primary care, generous paid time off, 401k plan with employer match and access to expert financial resources, company paid and voluntary life insurance, tax deferred savings accounts, 10 backup daycare days each year, short- and long-term disability, commuter benefits and more.  For more information, click here.  Role Summary Suffolk’s AI Studio is seeking a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead the engineering execution of our AI systems and platform services. This role combines technical leadership, people management, and hands-on engineering. You will manage a team of AI engineers (U.S. and India) while contributing directly to architecture, code, and delivery of production AI systems. You will focus on: Raising engineering rigor Improving system architecture quality Ensuring scalable, reliable AI services Driving consistent delivery execution This role reports to the VP, Artificial Intelligence, and partners closely with Product and Domain leaders. Scope of Responsibility This role is accountable for: Engineering execution quality Platform architecture implementation Team technical mentorship Delivery predictability Offshore team coordination Responsibilities AI Systems Engineering Leadership Guide the team in building production-grade RAG pipelines and agentic systems Establish practical patterns for multi-model orchestration and inference reliability Ensure AI systems include cost controls, fallback strategies, and evaluation frameworks Review and improve agent safety, tool invocation patterns, and guardrails Architecture & Distributed Systems Quality Lead architecture reviews for new AI services. Improve API design standards, versioning practices, and event-driven patterns Ensure proper handling of retries, idempotency, and asynchronous workflows Drive adoption of observability and monitoring best practices Identify and remediate architectural debt. Team Leadership Directly manage AI engineers in the U.S. Provide technical oversight and structured guidance to offshore India engineers Conduct code reviews and system design reviews Coach engineers in distributed systems thinking and production hardening Improve sprint execution discipline and technical accountability Delivery & Operational Excellence Ensure AI solutions move from prototype to production reliably Partner with Product and Domain AI leads to translate requirements into well-architected systems Coordinate closely with DevOps on deployment, CI/CD, and infrastructure standards Improve predictability in delivery timelines and system reliability Qualifications Qualifications 8 years of professional software engineering experience 2+ years developing enterprise AI applications 2+ years of people management or technical team leadership Hands-on experience building LLM-integrated applications Experience with RAG pipelines, vector databases and agentic stacks Strong background in backend and distributed systems design Strong AWS experience (Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, SQS/SNS, Step Functions, Bedrock) Proven ability to lead offshore or distributed teams Strong coding proficiency in Python and one of Java, NodeJS, Rust or Kotlin You are A strong senior engineer who enjoys mentoring others Comfortable reviewing architecture and writing production code Excited by applied AI, but grounded in systems engineering fundamentals Structured in execution and clear in communication Able to raise the team’s technical bar without overcomplicating systems What Success Looks Like AI services are production-ready, observable, and scalable The offshore team operates with clarity and accountability Architecture decisions are consistent and well-documented The AI engineering team improves in distributed systems maturity Delivery is predictable and high-quality Working Conditions While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly requir