AI Team Lead - Java – AI Enablement

Proudly voted a Great Place to Work®, we are a dynamic startup in the SaaS space that is revolutionizing the way businesses communicate. Our team is made up of 500 energetic and passionate Unifones who are dedicated to delivering the best possible experience to 5000+ customer-centric companies.

We pride ourselves on our fun and collaborative work environment, where creativity and new ideas are constantly encouraged. As shareholders in the business, we’re so much more than a group of passionate communicators. We are Unifones. Join our team and be a part of something big!

Our Engineering team is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the systems and technologies that drive Unifonic’s solutions. We work closely with other departments to ensure our products and services meet the needs of our customers. If you are passionate about technology and are excited about working on cutting-edge communication and engagement solutions, we want you on our team. 

Our Customer Care Squad transforms customer support from reactive to predictive—leveraging state-of-the-art AI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and Large Language Models (LLMs) to provide accurate, real-time, personalized assistance at a massive scale.

The AI Enablement Squad integrates cutting-edge AI services seamlessly into our Java-based enterprise platform, transforming AI research and models into robust, scalable, production-grade solutions, reaching millions of users globally. 

As an AI Engineering Lead, you will play a pivotal role in driving the architecture, delivery, and operational excellence of enterprise-grade systems. This position is ideal for a seasoned Java engineering leader who has 'been there and done that'—bringing deep experience in building scalable platforms, integrating advanced AI models, and leading high-performance full-stack teams

Help us shape the future of communication by:

• Leading by example, actively coding and architecting alongside your team, ensuring best-in-class software design and delivery from backend (Java/Spring Boot) to frontend (Angular). 

• Architecting and maintaining scalable Java microservices, APIs (REST, gRPC), relational (PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (MongoDB) databases, and Angular-based frontends with meticulous attention to reliability, security, and performance. 

• Integrating external AI components (LLMs, embeddings, vector databases such as Pinecone, Milvus, Weaviate), as well as personalization / recommendation systems ensuring robust communication between Java services and AI microservices, maintaining low latency and high availability. 

• Championing mature CI/CD pipelines (Drone CI, ArgoCD), GitOps deployments, Kubernetes orchestration, and infrastructure as code, optimizing DORA metrics: deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, and change failure rate. 

• Setting rigorous standards for testing (unit, integration, performance), ensure continuous quality via SonarQube, JaCoCo, Checkstyle, and build robust monitoring, logging, and alerting strategies (Elastic Stack, Prometheus, Grafana, OpsGenie). 

• Overseeing deployments on AWS or OCI using Kubernetes (EKS), Docker (Alpine-based), Helm/Kustomize, ensuring high availability, scalability, and security best practices. 

• Working closely with AI squads, DevOps, Product Management, QA, and Data teams to translate complex business and AI requirements into actionable engineering tasks. 

• Mentoring, coaching, and inspiring your engineering team through detailed code reviews, pair programming, and regular feedback, fostering a collaborative culture of excellence and continuous improvement. 

What you’ll bring:

• 7+ years of hands-on Java engineering, including at least 3 years as a tech lead or senior engineer responsible for end-to-end system ownership in production environments.

• Deep mastery of modern Java (11+), Spring Boot, Hibernate/JPA, RESTful and gRPC APIs, and high-performance microservice architecture. 

• Proven track record improving all four DORA metrics (Deployment Frequency, Lead Time, Change Failure Rate, MTTR). 

• Expert-level experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and GitOps deployment (ArgoCD), along with CI/CD tools (Drone CI or similar). 

• Extensive experience with messaging/event-driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ), caching strategies (Redis), and data modeling (PostgreSQL, MongoDB). 

• Demonstrated experience integrating AI/ML models (LLMs, embeddings, vector databases, personalization/recommendation) into production Java environments. 

• Exceptional communication skills with a pragmatic, results-oriented approach to software engineering and leadership. 

• Arabic and English language proficiency is a must.

• Hands-on experience with Java-based AI frameworks like Spring AI or LangChain4j is preferred.

• Familiarity with advanced RAG systems (HyDE, reranking, context management) is preferred.

• Practical knowledge of Saudi PDPL, GDPR, or similar data privacy regulations is preferred.

• Contributions to open-source Java, AI, or DevOps communities are preferred.

As a Unifone you’ll receive a range of benefits:

• Competitive salary and bonus

• Unifonic share scheme (we are all owners!)

• 30 holiday days after the first anniversary

• Your Birthday is off!

• Spend up to 25 days per year working from anywhere in the world!

• Paid leave for new parents

• LinkedIn learning license