A global leader in aerospace and defense technology is hiring for a Contract Lead AI Engineer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The company is developing advanced avionics, communications, and mission critical systems used across commercial and military aviation. They're known for innovation, long product lifecycles, and solving highly complex technical challenges where reliability and certification requirements are critical. In this role, you will lead a small team of approximately 4-7 engineers within a larger organization of roughly 50-60 technical professionals. They're looking for a mentor and technical leader who can guide engineers while remaining deeply involved in architecture, experimentation, development, and deployment. You'd be focused on designing, building, and scaling enterprise AI solutions. The role requires someone who understands AI beyond simple API integrations and has experience evaluating models, optimizing prompts and token usage, building production-grade workflows, and making technical decisions around AI architecture. Required Skills & Experience Experience mentoring or leading teams of 4-7 Python FS Engineering experience LLMs, prompt engineering, RAG token optimization, and AI architecture Experience building and deploying production AI systems Builder mentality with a desire to stay hands-on technically Desired Skills & Experience Go/Golang experience C/C++ LangChain, LangGraph, or similar AI frameworks Agentic workflow development Enterprise AI deployment experience Computer vision experience Aerospace, defense, robotics, or highly regulated industry experience Technical leadership within agile software development teams What You Will Be Doing Tech Breakdown 40% AI Engineering & LLM Development 30% Python Software Engineering 15% Architecture & Technical Leadership 10% Agentic Workflows & Automation 5% Documentation & Testing Daily Responsibilities 60% Hands-On Development 20% Management & Mentorship The Offer 5 days on-site in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Competitive pay depending on experience Applicants must be currently authorized to work in the US on a full-time basis now and in the future.