Senior Associate, Applied AI Engineer (Direct Hire)
Chicago,IL
Job Requisition: 7652
Annual Salary Range: $130 – 160K. Individual salaries are based on education, geographic location, and alignment to the market data.
Description for Senior Associate, Applied AI Engineer:
The Senior Associate, Applied AI Engineer is a hands-on technical role focused on designing, building, and operationalizing AI agents and automation workflows across the organization. This position works with modern AI techniques, including retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, and agent frameworks, within a Databricks-centric data platform and Microsoft Copilot Studio environment. The role emphasizes building reliable, auditable AI systems that integrate deeply with enterprise data and business processes, while collaborating closely with cross-functional teams to ensure AI solutions are accurate, effective, and aligned with business objectives.
Responsibilities for Senior Associate, Applied AI Engineer:
- Develop and deploy AI agents using RAG, tool orchestration frameworks, and prompt logic
- Prepare and process structured and unstructured data for AI workflows, including document ingestion, metadata enrichment, and indexing
- Build and maintain experimentation and evaluation pipelines in Databricks (Delta Lake, notebooks, jobs, MLflow)
- Integrate AI agents into Microsoft Copilot Studio and enterprise systems, APIs, and workflows
- Audit AI agent behavior for accuracy, completeness, and alignment with business intent
- Identify errors, retrieval gaps, or hallucinations and propose corrective solutions
- Support monitoring, iteration, and performance tracking of deployed AI agents
- Collaborate with product managers, engineers, and stakeholders to define problem statements, success metrics, and workflow requirements
- Communicate system behavior, limitations, and trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders
- Ensure AI implementations follow responsible AI practices and organizational governance standards
- Perform other duties as assigned to support AI initiatives and innovation
Requirements for Senior Associate, Applied AI Engineer:
- 2–5 years of experience in applied AI, ML engineering, data science, or analytics engineering
- Hands-on experience developing AI/ML solutions in production or enterprise environments
- Proficiency in Python and modern ML frameworks
- Experience with Databricks (Delta Lake, notebooks, jobs, MLflow)
- Familiarity with Microsoft Copilot Studio or similar agent-based AI platforms
- Knowledge of retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, and vector databases
- Experience designing and evaluating AI agent workflows, prompts, and outputs
- Strong understanding of data structures, algorithms, and software engineering principles
- Ability to translate business needs into technical AI solutions
- Strong collaboration and communication skills across technical and non-technical teams
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or related field (or equivalent practical experience)
Preferred Requirements for Senior Associate, Applied AI Engineer:
- Experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred, AWS/GCP acceptable)
- Familiarity with LLM evaluation, agent testing, and semantic search
- Exposure to responsible AI frameworks and governance
Benefits for Senior Associate, Applied AI Engineer:
- Employees may be eligible for discretionary bonuses, typically up to 20% of base salary annually, depending on individual and organizational performance.
- Paid flexible PTO
- Paid 14+ holidays, including your birthday
- Paid Parental Leave that begins after 90 days
- Paid volunteer time off to give back to your community
- Monthly workshop weeks
- Health plan options that begin within at least 30 days of your employment
- Monthly phone reimbursement
- Wellness allowance and perks, including a yearly subscription to a meditation app
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for access to confidential support services
- Company retirement options including 401(k) + matching & Roth account option
