AI ML Tech Lead

Assent is the leading solution for supply chain sustainability tailored for the world's top-tier, sustainability-driven manufacturers. Hidden risks riddle supply chains, many of which weren't built with sustainability in mind. That's where we step in. With insights from experts, Assent is the tool manufacturers trust for comprehensive sustainability.

We are proud to announce that Assent has crossed the US$100M ARR milestone, granting us Centaur Status. This accomplishment, reached just 8 years following our Series A, makes us the first and only Certified B Corporation in North America's SaaS sustainability industry to celebrate this milestone.

Our journey from $5 million to US$100M ARR in just eight years has been marked by significant growth and achievements. With our $350 million US funding led by Vista Equity Partners, we're poised for even greater expansion and are on the lookout for outstanding team members to join our mission.

Hybrid Work Model

At Assent, we proudly embrace a remote-first work model, valuing the flexibility and autonomy it provides our team. We also acknowledge the intangible benefits of occasional in-person workdays. For team members situated within 50 kms/31 miles of our five global offices in Ottawa, Eldoret, Penang, Columbus, Pune and Amsterdam, you can expect to come into the office 1-3 days a week. Similarly, those near our co-working spaces in Nairobi and Toronto are encouraged to work onsite once a month.

We are seeking a Technical Lead, AI/ML to play a pivotal role in the design, development, and delivery of Assent's AI and machine learning solutions, including the development of Assent's next generation of Agentic AI systems—intelligent, autonomous, and context-aware solutions that reason over Assent's deep regulatory and product data ecosystem. This role combines technical depth with leadership and mentorship, ensuring the team builds scalable, reliable, and responsible AI systems that enhance Assent's products and data platform.

You will collaborate with Data Science, Data Engineers, MLOps, and Product teams to translate complex business challenges into AI-powered solutions, guide model architecture decisions, and oversee end-to-end development—from data preparation through deployment and monitoring.

As a technical leader, you will help establish Assent's AI/ML engineering standards, accelerate adoption of Generative AI capabilities, and ensure all models align with Responsible AI principles, transparency, and governance requirements.

Key Requirements & Responsibilities: 

• Lead the design and implementation of AI/ML and Generative AI systems, including model development, fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment across multiple business domains.

• Provide technical direction and mentorship to ML engineers, data scientists, and annotation teams, ensuring adherence to best practices and fostering a culture of quality and experimentation.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Data, and Engineering teams to define use cases, contracts, success metrics, and delivery milestones aligned with business and regulatory goals.

• Architect and optimize end-to-end pipelines—from data ingestion and feature engineering to model training, validation, and monitoring in production environments.

• Lead initiatives in Generative AI, including Large Language Model (LLM) evaluation, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and output quality assessment.

• Champion Responsible AI practices, embedding fairness, transparency, and explainability into data collection, model design, and deployment workflows.

• Establish and maintain technical standards for python code quality, model development, experiment tracking, version control, and CI/CD pipelines to ensure reproducibility and scalability.

• Partner with MLOps and Data Engineering teams to integrate model observability, drift detection, and monitoring into deployed systems.

• Collaborate with data governance and security teams to ensure data integrity, compliance, and adherence to corporate security and privacy policies.

• Stay ahead of industry trends in AI, LLMs, and applied ML, evaluating new techniques and tools for their applicability to Assent's roadmap.

• Contribute to planning and prioritization, ensuring the AI/ML technical roadmap supports product innovation while maintaining operational reliability.

• Be familiar with corporate security policies and follow the guidance set out by processes and procedures of Assent.

We strongly value your talent, energy and passion. It will also be valuable to Assent if you have the following qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in machine learning engineering, applied AI, or data science, with at least 2 years in a technical leadership or team lead role.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical field. Advanced certifications in AI/ML, Generative AI, or AWS are considered an asset.

• Proven experience developing and deploying Agentic and Generative AI applications, including LLM integration, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and RAG-based retrieval workflows.

• Strong proficiency in Python (Pandas, PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn) and SQL, with a deep understanding of model training, optimization, and evaluation at scale.

• Hands-on experience with cloud-based MLOps tools and infrastructure (e.g., AWS SageMaker, ECS, Lambda, Step Functions, EventBridge, S3, or similar).

• Experience designing AI pipelines and architectures for both traditional ML and generative models.

• Working knowledge of vector databases, embeddings, and semantic search.

• Experience with agentic AI protocols and orchestration frameworks such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), LangChain Agents, Semantic Kernel, or DSPy, enabling seamless interaction between models, tools, and enterprise data sources.

• Experience implementing Responsible AI principles, including fairness, explainability, bias detection, and governance.

• Familiarity with model observability tools and techniques for monitoring model drift and performance degradation.

• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders.

• Passion for mentoring engineers, fostering technical excellence, and promoting ethical, trustworthy AI innovation.

Life at Assent

Wellness: We believe that you and your family's well being is important. As a result, we offer vacation time that increases with tenure, comprehensive benefits packages (details vary by country), life leave days and more.

Financial Benefits: It's not all about the money – well, it's a little about the money. We understand that financial health is important and we offer a competitive base salary, a corporate bonus program, retirement savings options and more.

Life at Assent: There is purpose beyond your work. We provide our team members with flexible work options, volunteer days and opportunities to get involved in corporate giving initiatives.

Lifelong Learning: At Assent, curiosity is not only valued but encouraged. You will receive professional development days that are available to you the day you start.

At Assent, we are committed to growing and sustaining an environment where our team members feel included, valued, and heard. Our diversity and equal opportunity practices are guided and championed by our Diversity and Inclusion Working Group and our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion includes recruiting and retaining team members from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and fostering a culture of belonging where all team members are included, treated with dignity and respect, promoted on their merits, and placed in positions to contribute to business success.

If you require assistance or accommodation throughout any part of the interview and selection process, please contact [email protected] and we will be happy to help.