Lead Applied AI Specialist

Apollo Education Systems – Early-Stage Startup | Pre-Series A | Fully Remote (U.S.) 

Apollo Education Systems is transforming the way schools use data to improve student outcomes. Backed by experienced EdTech founders and supported by Cie Digital Labs, we are building the next generation of intelligent, AI-driven student and school data management software. 

We are seeking a Lead Applied AI Specialist — not just an engineer who can use AI, but someone who can define Apollo’s AI standards, architect AI-driven product features, and lead the adoption of AI across the engineering organization. This role blends high-level architectural leadership with hands-on prototyping of RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, embedding strategies, and AI-enabled application features. 

This is a role for someone who can operate as a force multiplier: a technical leader who builds features, elevates the entire engineering team’s AI capabilities, and ensures Apollo fully leverages modern AI across product and internal tooling. 

Why This Role Matters 

• Organization-Level Impact: You will establish how Apollo engineers use AI in their daily work — tools, workflows, coding practices, documentation, and orchestration.
• Product-Level Ownership: You’ll architect RAG pipelines, context systems, and intelligent UX patterns that bring AI directly into the hands of educators.
• Strategic Influence: Work directly with the CTO and engineering leadership to define our long-term AI roadmap.
• High Autonomy: This is a lead/director-level role requiring strong ownership, independent decision-making, and the authority to drive cultural and technical change. 

What You’ll Do 

AI Leadership & Organizational Enablement 

• Define and own Apollo’s AI development standards, including prompting frameworks, context strategies, tooling recommendations, documentation schemas, and safety guidelines. 
• Lead the rollout of AI adoption across the engineering team — ensuring every developer uses AI effectively within the IDE and within established workflows. 
• Evaluate and implement AI-driven engineering tools (AI code assistants, test generation workflows, local context systems, etc.). 
• Train and mentor developers on AI usage, best practices, prompting, safety, and feature integration. 
• Establish processes for AI code reviews, reliability, performance, and versioning. 

AI Architecture & Product Feature Development 

• Architect RAG pipelines, embedding strategies, vector-store schemas, chunking approaches, and retrieval workflows. 
• Design and prototype intelligent features that rely on LLMs, hybrid retrieval, reasoning, and multi-step orchestration. 
• Define technical specifications that guide backend and frontend engineers in implementing AI-driven features. 
• Work cross-functionally to ensure AI capabilities integrate cleanly into the broader .NET Core + Angular platform. 
• Partner with product leadership to identify new AI-powered opportunities in student and school data, compliance, analytics, and automated workflows. 

Hands-On Applied Engineering 

• Build proof-of-concept workflows in Python or TypeScript (e.g., RAG, agentic tasks, document-processing pipelines). 
• Create evaluation frameworks to measure model performance, safety, and cost-efficiency. 
• Write and maintain prompt templates, system instructions, tools, and agents. 
• Implement integrations with major AI platforms (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, etc.). 
• Provide architectural oversight on AI infrastructure components (vector stores, caching, embeddings, etc.). 

What We’re Looking For 

Required Background 

• 10+ years of software engineering experience. 
• 3+ years delivering production-grade Applied AI features (not just prototypes). 
• Experience designing and shipping: 
• RAG pipelines 
• Context/embedding systems 
• LangChain / Semantic Kernel / LlamaIndex or similar 
• Evaluation and safety tooling 
• Strong technical leadership skills with the ability to define standards, influence teams, and drive adoption. 

Technical Skills 

Proficiency with: 

• Python for AI workflow development 
• LLM APIs and orchestration frameworks 
• Vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, etc.) 
• Familiarity with core Apollo technologies: 
• .NET Core, C#, EF Core 
• Angular, TypeScript 
• PostgreSQL 

Qualities That Predict Success 

• A “force multiplier” mindset – passionate about elevating team-wide capability. 
• Ability to mentor, guide, influence, and set vision across engineering. 
• Pragmatic and product-focused; understands trade-offs and real-world constraints. 
• Comfortable with ambiguity and startup pace. 
• Strong communication and documentation skills. 

Compensation & Benefits 

• $160,000–$180,000 salary range (based on experience) 
• Early equity – grow with the company’s success 
• Full suite of benefits 
• Career growth in an expanding organization 
• Fully remote (U.S. only) with flexible hours and high autonomy 

Join the Future of Applied AI in Education 

If you’re excited to build real-world AI workflows, architect intelligent systems, and raise the AI capability of an entire engineering organization — this is your role. 

Join Apollo to shape how schools use AI to transform student data, learning outcomes, and daily workflows.