Jobs / United States / William Blair Company LLC
Lead Data Scientist – AI Engineer
William Blair Company LLC · 🇺🇸 Chicago, Illinois, United States
Sponsorship verdict
Sponsorship possible
One solid signal, not two — worth applying, and worth asking about sponsorship early.
- Employer is on a government sponsor recordThe US Department of Labor certified 13 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 3 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
- The posting doesn’t mention sponsorshipSilence isn’t a refusal — ask the recruiter before investing much time.
- No salary bar for this routeH-1B has no fixed salary bar: the employer must pay at least the prevailing wage for the role and area. Cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b, rules effective 2026-02-27.
- What William Blair Company LLC paid sponsored hires in similar roles1 certified filing for “Data Scientist” (Data Scientists) in IL: $130k–$130k, median $130k. Most were filed at wage level II (100%) — 2 lottery entries, ≈31% projected selection odds for cap-subject employers. Source: US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).
- Confirmed live todayWhen a source last listed this job as open.
US H-1B: cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level — Level I gets 1 entry, Level IV gets 4 (DHS projected selection odds ≈15% at Level I to ≈61% at Level IV). Universities and non-profit research employers are cap-exempt. The $100,000 fee for new petitions from abroad is currently blocked by a court order (appeal pending).
A verdict summarises public evidence; it is not legal advice and never a guarantee — the employer and the immigration authority decide. Sign in to factor in where you can already work.
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Sponsor Radar — William Blair Company LLC
The US Department of Labor certified 13 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 3 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
Past sponsorship or register membership never guarantees sponsorship for this vacancy or for you. Full Sponsor Radar for William Blair Company LLC →
About the role
Solutions for Today’s Challenges. Vision for Tomorrow’s Opportunities. Join William Blair, the Premier Global Partnership. We are looking for a Lead AI Engineer to join a newly formed AI Innovation Function, part of the Investment Banking AI & Technology team. This is not a back-office engineering role. Inspired by the Forward Deployed Engineer model, you will be embedded directly with deal teams and industry groups—understanding their workflows firsthand, building AI-powered tools that deliver measurable outcomes, and taking end-to-end accountability for what you ship. You will set the engineering standards for the team: architecture decisions, code quality, testing practices, and deployment patterns. You will work across the full stack—from data pipelines and ML models to LLM orchestration and Salesforce integrations—with the options to choose the right tool for each problem and the discipline to build for longevity. RESPONSIBILITIES • Design and build the integration layer between Enterprise Claude, Salesforce CRM, and our proprietary ML models, creating the orchestration backbone for AI-powered banking workflows. • Develop AI agents and multi-step LLM applications for high-value use cases: CIP first-draft generation, buyer landscape analysis, intelligent process letter drafting, and deal status automation. • Set engineering standards for the Innovation Team: code review practices, CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, and documentation norms that enable speed without sacrificing reliability. • Work directly with deal teams and industry/sector groups to understand workflows, identify automation opportunities, and iterate on deployed tools based on real-world banker feedback. • Build and maintain data pipelines using Databricks and Dagster for feature engineering, model training, and analytics that feed AI capabilities. • Perform rapid analysis and prototyping—translate a banker’s pain point into a working proof of concept within days, not weeks. • Evaluate and integrate point solutions (Rogo.ai, Blueflame AI, Fellow.ai) via APIs, ensuring clean data flows and consistent user experiences within Salesforce. • Implement security and data governance protocols appropriate for confidential deal information. QUALIFICATIONS • 5+ years of software engineering experience with a strong full-stack foundation, including production experience building applications that serve demanding end users. • Hands-on experience building applications or agents using large language models: prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, multi-step orchestration, tool use, and evaluation frameworks. • Experience deploying and operating multi-agent ecosystems in production — including reliability engineering, monitoring, failure recovery, and scaling agent infrastructure for enterprise workloads. • Strong ML fundamentals—ability to train, evaluate, and deploy models, perform exploratory data analysis, and build feature pipelines. • Rigorous engineering practices: you write tested, reviewed, well-documented code and build systems designed for maintainability, not just demos. • Familiarity with capital markets, and preferably direct experience in or adjacent to investment banking, private equity, venture capital, or hedge funds. • Experience with cloud infrastructure (Azure preferred), data platforms (Databricks/Spark), and orchestration tools (Dagster, Airflow, or equivalent). • Outcome orientation—you measure success by business impact delivered, not features shipped. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS • Experience in a Forward Deployed Engineer, solutions engineer, or embedded technical role where you owned outcomes alongside business stakeholders. • Prior work with Salesforce APIs, SOQL, or CRM integration patterns. • Experience archite