AI Technical Lead

AI Technical Lead, Stanford Law School

School of Law, Stanford, California, United States

Information Technology Services

Post Date Apr 10, 2025

Requisition 106229

NOTE: This position has been deemed critical/has specific funding, has been approved by the Law School for posting, and is exempt from the hiring freeze.

Full Time, Fixed Term through December 2026

The Legal Design Lab team researches, designs, and develops new interventions to ensure access to justice for all.

Our team builds and studies new technologies, services, and policies that can empower people who are dealing with legal problems. We coordinate people, ideas, infrastructure, and data that can scale justice innovations.

We are working towards a future where courts, legal services, Internet platforms, community groups, government agencies, and other justice institutions better help people resolve their justice problems, protect their rights, and improve their communities with dignity and empowerment.

The Legal Design Lab is searching for an AI Technical Lead, who will design, build, and implement new, high quality, high performance web-based applications and tools that maximally leverage available technology infrastructure.

In this role, you will work with the Legal Design Lab team to understand our partners' specific needs and requirements around using a new AI-powered web application to do tasks like draft legal documents, collect administrative data, interview clients, or find patterns in data. You will create prototypes of new applications for the Lab team and legal aid partners to test and review for safety. You will continually refine these applications until they are approved by the Lab team and partners for pilot testing. You will gather analytics data to measure application performance and report to the Lab team and partners. You will report to the Law School's CIO, and support the Legal Design Lab Team, working closing with the Executive Director and other staff.

CORE DUTIES:
•   Design, implement, and deploy web-based applications and websites from initial design and architecture through development, test, and deployment.
•   Implement and maintain content management systems, including installation, configuration, troubleshooting, and creation of Stanford-specific modules.
•   Evaluate third-party modules for functionality, accessibility, security, and maintainability.
•   Perform selected website administration duties for existing clients. Ensure web server and site technical performance.
•   Provide technical expertise in front- and back-end web development. Support web infrastructure by providing end-user support, applications maintenance, product evaluation, back-end development, and internal management tools. More About the Role & Responsibilities

Project Development & Technical Strategy
•   Lead technical design, prototyping, and iteration of AI-powered applications that we are scoping out with our partner organizations working on eviction defense and reentry help (e.g., legal copilots, triage bots, document generators).
•   Work with existing AI models (e.g., GPT, Claude, Gemini, open-source LLMs) to fine-tune and adapt them for legal use cases. Experiment with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), vector databases, and embedding-based search to improve AI responses with trusted legal knowledge bases.
•   Translate legal workflows and design mockups into structured, build-ready technical requirements.
•   Oversee and contribute to backend development, data structuring, prompt engineering, and model configuration. Rapid Prototyping & Web Applications
•   Build simple, scalable web applications that integrate AI-powered legal tools.
•   Work with UX designers and legal aid partners to make AI tools usable, intuitive, and effective for legal professionals and the public.
•   Assess tech stack options (Google Cloud, AWS, open-source LLM frameworks) and make pragmatic recommendations for deployment.
•   Ensure applications are secure, privacy-compliant, and scalable for legal service use. Collaboration & Supervision
•   Collaborate with the Legal Design Lab team, legal aid attorneys, and community stakeholders to align technical solutions with user needs and policies.
•   Supervise and mentor technical student research assistants and fellows.
•   Provide regular updates and planning support to lab leadership and partner organizations. Data & AI Model Infrastructure
•   Work with our partner organizations to collect and process training data and knowledge bases.
•   Manage AI prompt and output testing workflows.
•   Oversee pipelines for storing, analyzing, and improving model responses.
•   Support integration of LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Gemini) and frameworks (e.g., LangChain, Vertex AI, RAG pipelines). Documentation & Reporting
•   Present technical strategy proposals, prototypes, and final applications at stakeholder meetings for discussion. Present development and evaluation work at national conferences.
•   Produce documentation, guides, and specs to support reproducibility, onboarding, and stakeholder understanding.
•   Contribute to technical reporting for funders and institutional partners.
•   Coordinate version control, model testing logs, and performance evaluations. Required Experience & Qualifications

Education and Experience

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field and 3+ years of relevant work experience, or equivalent.
•   Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
•   Demonstrated ability to develop web content management systems.
•   Demonstrated ability to develop complex web applications using open source tools, languages, libraries, and current standards-compliant code.
•   Knowledge of web content development and cloud services.
•   Expert level knowledge of front-end development languages and ability to hand code HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
•   Solid understanding of web standards and usability methods.
•   Expert knowledge of content management systems, such as Drupal, including the ability to perform standard installation and configuration.
•   Demonstrated ability to write, compile, test, debug, and deploy software.
•   Knowledge of web analytics tools and related analyses.
•   Ability to design and manage relational databases.
•   Ability to design and implement web services.
•   Ability to interact positively with and build consensus among a diverse group of colleagues, clients, and senior leadership. Leadership and Follow-Through - Demonstrated ability to manage a technical project from idea to prototype, including working across disciplines. Strong communication and documentation skills; able to translate technical concepts for non-technical collaborators.

Full-Stack Development Work - Strong experience with backend development (e.g., Python/Flask/FastAPI or Node.js) and familiarity with frontend basics (e.g., React or Vue). Ability to build and deploy web applications quickly, even if they are MVPs or prototypes.

AI Experience - Familiarity with prompt engineering, LLM APIs (OpenAI, Gemini, Claude), and working with vector databases and RAG workflows.

Cloud & Deployment - Familiarity with Google Cloud, Firebase, AWS, or Azure for hosting AI models & applications. Experience deploying applications to cloud environments.

Security & Privacy Awareness - Understanding of data security, PII protection, and compliance considerations for legal applications.

Preferred Qualifications
•   Working on civic tech, legal tech, or social impact AI projects.
•   Experience managing students or junior developers in a research or academic environment.
•   Familiarity with tools like LangChain, MLflow, Hugging Face, or Databricks for LLM experimentation and evaluation.
•   Experience designing with accessibility, plain language, and user empowerment in mind.
•   Comfort participating in stakeholder meetings with lawyers, courts, and nonprofits. Consistent with its obligations under the law, the University will provide reasonable accommodation to any employee with a disability who requires accommodation to perform the essential functions of the job.

The expected pay range for this position is $98,219 to $129,054 per annum. Stanford University provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the university reasonably expects to pay for a position. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographic location and external market pay for comparable jobs.

At Stanford University, base pay represents only one aspect of the comprehensive rewards package. The Cardinal at Work website provides detailed information on Stanford's extensive range of benefits and rewards offered to employees. Specifics about the rewards package for this position may be discussed during the hiring process.

Stanford is an equal employment opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation . click apply for full job details