#29: What Is a Lead AI Engineer?
September 15, 2026
What does it look like when a company makes AI adoption someone’s full-time job? Dustin and Andy are joined by Charles Thomas, a Lead AI and Automations Engineer helping a 350-person property management company put AI to work across its organization. Charles shares how he went from cloud engineering to leading AI implementation, how his company collects automation ideas from employees, and why empowering nontechnical users to experiment with tools like Claude can unlock opportunities IT might never discover on its own.
The conversation covers the practical challenges that come with company-wide AI adoption, including governance, security, MCP servers, permissions, token costs, employee resistance, and avoiding over-engineered solutions. Charles also shares one of his biggest lessons: spend time watching how people actually work. Repetitive spreadsheets, manual reports, data transfers, and frustrating processes can reveal some of the best opportunities for AI and automation.
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