Lead Engineer, AI & Process Automation

Company Profile

The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with $485 billion of assets under management, across 678 investment vehicles as of June 30, 2026. Founded in 1987 in Washington, DC, Carlyle has grown into one of the world's largest and most successful investment firms, with more than 2,500 professionals operating in 28 offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia.

Carlyle's purpose is to connect people, ideas, and capital to fuel growth for companies and performance for investors, which range from public and private pension funds to wealthy individuals and families to sovereign wealth funds, unions and corporations. Carlyle invests across three segments - Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Carlyle AlpInvest - and has deep expertise across industries, markets, and geographies.

At Carlyle, we believe that a wide spectrum of experiences and viewpoints drives performance and success. Our CEO, Harvey Schwartz, has stated that, "To build better businesses and create value for all of our stakeholders, we are focused on assembling leadership teams with the strongest insights from a range of perspectives." Reflecting this view, emphasis is placed on development, retention and inclusion through our internal processes and seven Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). We cultivate a culture where ideas are openly shared and challenged, connecting diverse expertise and perspectives to drive enduring value.

Position Summary

The AI Engineer, AI & Process Automation, is a hands-on individual contributor within Carlyle’s Corporate Services Technology organization. Reporting to the Lead Engineer, AI & Process Automation, you will help build and ship AI and automation solutions for business domains including Finance, Tax, Human Capital, Legal & Compliance, and Marketing & Communications. Corporate Services is where AI can compound the firm’s operating leverage fastest: high-volume document and data workflows, deep institutional knowledge, and clear measures of throughput and quality. We are building Carlyle’s next generation of AI-native products against that opportunity, and we are investing in the talent, tooling, and platforms required to win.

This is a builder’s role. You will work alongside senior engineers and business stakeholders to turn well-scoped business problems into working software, and you will own the components and features you build from development through production. Over time, you will take on larger pieces of work and greater ownership as you grow with the team.

You will build AI solutions using modern coding agents and developer tools such as Claude Code and Cursor, along with the surrounding DevOps stack. Your work will include applications, agentic workflows, and copilots tailored to how Corporate Services actually works. Carlyle takes a best-of-breed approach to AI, and you will help apply the right models, frameworks, and tools to each problem rather than defaulting to a single vendor.

What Success Looks Like

In the first 12 months, you will have made meaningful engineering contributions to multiple production AI products used in real Corporate Services workflows, independently delivered well-defined features and components with high quality and reliability, adopted and improved the team’s patterns and building blocks, and built strong working relationships with the business users and engineering peers you support.

In-Office Requirement: 4 days a week

Primary Responsibilities

Solution Delivery (≈70%)

• Build features and components for AI and automation products, working with senior engineers and your manager on design and
• scope.
• Work directly with business users to understand their workflows, clarify requirements, and gather feedback on what you build.
• Develop AI-native capabilities including agentic workflows, LLM-powered analytics, document intelligence pipelines, and
• human-in-the-loop copilots.
• Implement end-to-end automation for Corporate Services processes, covering intake and data capture, approvals, exception handling,
• and integration with downstream systems.
• Prototype quickly, iterate based on user feedback, and help harden solutions for production.
• Support the deployment, monitoring, and ongoing improvement of the solutions you contribute to.

Engineering Craft & Reusability (≈30%)

• Write production-quality code and follow rigorous engineering practices, including code review, testing, deployment hygiene, and
• monitoring.
• Use modern AI coding agents and developer tools (Claude Code, Cursor) effectively to deliver faster without sacrificing quality.
• Build within the team’s standards, patterns, and guardrails for AI solutions, and suggest improvements as you find them.
• Contribute to shared building blocks such as components, evaluation harnesses, prompt and agent patterns, and deployment
• templates.
• Participate in code reviews, giving and receiving feedback to raise quality across the team.
• Work with infrastructure, data, and security teams so that what you build meets enterprise standards for observability, controls, and
• audit.
• Stay current on the AI landscape and share promising tools, models, and techniques with the team.

Qualifications

Education & Certifications

• Bachelor’s degree, required
• Concentration in computer science, software engineering, mathematics, physics, data science, or a related technical field, preferred

Professional Experience

• 3+ years of overall relevant hands-on software engineering experience, required
• 1+ year building and shipping AI applications (LLM-powered apps, agentic workflows, RAG systems, or copilots) to real users, required
• Working experience with modern AI coding agents and developer tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor) and core DevOps practices:
• version control, CI/CD, testing, containerization, and cloud deployment.
• Experience working with both structured data (databases, warehouses, transactional sources) and unstructured data (PDFs,
• documents, transcripts).
• Exposure to document intelligence, OCR, LLM-based extraction, or workflow automation, preferred.
• Strong coding skills in Python, plus working knowledge of TypeScript or Java. Familiarity with front-end frameworks (e.g., React) and
• data processing tools (e.g., Spark), preferred.
• Experience working with business users, ideally in regulated or financial services environments, preferred.

Competencies & Attributes

• Builder’s instinct. You like shipping working software, iterating quickly, and turning defined problems into working prototypes.
• User focus. You take time to understand how users actually work and build solutions that hold up in practice.
• Reusability mindset. You look for ways to reuse and improve existing patterns rather than starting from scratch.
• Intellectual honesty about AI. You understand what current models can and cannot do, design around their limits, and know the difference between a compelling demo and a reliable production system.
• Collaborative. You work well with engineers and business stakeholders, ask good questions, and communicate clearly about progress,
• trade-offs, and blockers.
• Eager to learn. You seek feedback, learn quickly, and want to grow your technical depth and scope over time.
• Curious and self-directed. You look beyond assigned tasks to spot improvements and suggest alternatives.

Benefits/Compensation

The compensation range for this role is specific to Washington, DC, and takes into account a wide range of factors including but not limited to the skill sets required/preferred; prior experience and training; licenses and/or certifications.

The anticipated base salary range for this role is $130,000 to $140,000. 

In addition to the base salary, the hired professional will enjoy a comprehensive benefits package spanning retirement benefits, health insurance, life insurance and disability, paid time off, paid holidays, family planning benefits and various wellness programs. Additionally, the hired professional may also be eligible to participate in an annual discretionary incentive program, the award of which will be dependent on various factors, including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance.

Due to the high volume of candidates, please be advised that only candidates selected to interview will be contacted by Carlyle.

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Who We Are

When people, ideas, and capital come together, opportunity expands across private markets. At Carlyle, this belief has shaped how we invest for decades, fueling growth for companies and delivering performance for investors.

Visit our website to learn more about our firm and the ways our platform is shaping private markets.