R&D Lead Engineer

R&D Lead Engineer

Concentrix

Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Join us in exploring how AI and LLMs can transform the way our products are built and used. We are looking for an R&D Lead Engineer to drive technical exploration, build proof-of-concepts, and turn cutting-edge research into practical, testable solutions.

In this role, you will lead hands-on experiments with large language models, agents, and AI tooling, while also running technical spikes that clarify architectural direction for our product teams. You’ll work closely with product and engineering to test end-to-end technical approaches, and help optimize, automate, and infuse AI into our CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and development of proof-of-concept (PoC) solutions using LLMs, generative AI, and related technologies;
• Plan and execute technical spikes to explore new architectures, de-risk design choices, and provide clear recommendations for product teams;
• Build experimental services, tools, and integrations (APIs, pipelines, microservices) to quickly test ideas end-to-end;
• Work as a polyglot engineer, using the best language or framework for each experiment (Python preferred, plus at least one other language such as TypeScript/Java/Go/C#);
• Collaborate with platform/DevOps teams to optimize and automate CI/CD pipelines, including using AI to improve testing, code quality, observability, and deployment workflows;
• Contribute to and help evolve infrastructure definition (IaC, environments, platform components) for the whole product organization, with a focus on enabling AI-powered features;
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineers involved in AI/LLM and platform initiatives, fostering a culture of curiosity, rigor, and knowledge sharing;
• Communicate results clearly through prototypes, demos, architecture documents, and recommendations for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Qualifications & Skills

Required:

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 2+ years in a senior or lead role;
• Strong proficiency in Python, with experience building APIs, services, or data/ML tooling;
• Polyglot mindset with production or serious project experience in at least one other language (e.g. TypeScript/JavaScript, Java, Go, C#, Rust, etc.);
• Hands-on experience with LLMs or modern ML/AI systems (e.g. OpenAI/Anthropic APIs, open-source LLMs, Hugging Face, etc.);
• Proven experience running technical spikes or architectural investigations, and turning findings into actionable decisions;
• Experience working with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices (e.g. GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, CircleCI, etc.);
• Solid understanding of software engineering fundamentals (testing strategies, code quality, observability, performance);
• Ability to work in an exploratory, ambiguous environment, making sound technical decisions with incomplete information;
• Strong communication skills, able to clearly present trade-offs and recommendations to both engineers and non-engineers.

Nice to have:

• Experience with agentic frameworks and tool-calling (LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel, or similar);
• Background in platform/DevEx engineering, especially using AI to assist with testing, code review, or incident analysis;
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks for LLM-driven systems (automatic metrics, human evaluation, red-teaming);
• Background in research engineering, innovation labs, or advanced prototyping.