AI Engineering Manager

Be yourself at Protolabs Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification.  We are an equal opportunity employer, and we are committed to building a diverse team that feels they are valued in the workplace.  So do you feel you do not meet every single requirement but still intrigued? We encourage you to still apply!  You can help make our company even better.  We do not discriminate based on race, colour, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, age, mental or physical ability, or any way you represent yourself.  We strongly believe diversity makes for more successful teams. Why Protolabs? We are the leaders in digital manufacturing. We hire doers, makers, and creative thinkers who tackle our roles with an entrepreneurial spirit. Our culture is centered around meaningful work that brings new and innovative products to market at unprecedented speeds. We are a diverse team that comes from all walks of life and take pride in our team who is smart, genuine, humble, and passionate about what we do. It’s our people who fuel our creativity and make our culture feel like home. Role - AI Tech Lead Key Competencies Technical 5+ years of hands-on AI/ML engineering experience, including modern deep learning, LLMs, transformers, vector stores, retrieval techniques, and model evaluation.  Strong Python engineering skills and experience with core AI frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow/Keras, and GenAI stacks like LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, and OpenAI/Azure/AWS SDKs.  Proven ability to evaluate build vs buy vs adapt decisions based on cost, effort, risk, and long-term maintainability.  Cloud-native AI development, preferably on AWS (SageMaker, Bedrock), with experience building scalable, secure, and compliant production systems.  Demonstrated experience with production-grade GenAI systems, including RAG pipelines, hybrid search, embedding strategies, and agentic workflows.  Strong MLOps background: CI/CD, model deployment, monitoring/observability, IaC, and workflow orchestration using tools like Prefect and Weights & Biases, or equivalents.  Experience with vector databases, scalable retrieval architectures, guardrailing LLMs and prompt engineering.  Familiarity with modern AI system design, including API serving, containerization (Docker), and distributed compute. Leadership & Collaboration  Experience working in Agile environments, including running or contributing to Scrum ceremonies, breaking down work into increments, and collaborating closely with TPM and EM in iterative delivery.  Ability to lead a team through ambiguity and early-stage environments.  Proactive style and strong ability for systematic problem solving.  Excellent communication capabilities across global departments.  Critical thinking in uncertain or rapidly evolving contexts. What to expect in the hiring process Alignment call Kick-off with an initial screening with one Talent Acquisition Partners, not really an interview, but the chance to learn more about how we do things, our process and a chance for you to ask all the things you want to know Interview A deeper dive into the role, what we're looking for the hiring manager and you to get to know one another Further interviews We always try to streamline our recruitment process as much as possible but may sometimes need to carry out further interviews. This may be to meet other members of the team or more senior employees. It may also be an opportunity to see the site or working area