AI/ML Engineer (Contract - Malvern, PA)

Job Title: AI/ML Engineer
Location: Malvern, PA – Onsite
Employment Type: Contract / Full-Time
Experience: 13+ years

Job Summary

Vanguard is looking for an experienced AI/ML Engineer to design, develop, deploy, and optimize machine learning and AI solutions for enterprise applications. The ideal candidate should have strong hands-on experience in Python, machine learning, generative AI/LLMs, NLP, cloud platforms, and production-grade AI/ML pipelines.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop machine learning and AI solutions for enterprise business problems.
• Develop, train, evaluate, and optimize ML models using Python.
• Work with Generative AI, LLMs, NLP, RAG, prompt engineering, and AI agents.
• Build production-ready AI applications using appropriate ML/GenAI frameworks.
• Develop RAG pipelines, including document ingestion, chunking, embeddings, vector search, retrieval, and response generation.
• Work with LLMs and foundation models and implement prompt/context engineering and model evaluation.
• Develop and integrate AI solutions with enterprise applications using REST APIs and microservices.
• Perform data preparation, feature engineering, model validation, and performance optimization.
• Work with structured and unstructured data using SQL and Python.
• Develop scalable AI/ML pipelines and support model deployment into production.
• Collaborate with Data Scientists, Data Engineers, Software Engineers, Architects, Product Owners, and business stakeholders.
• Monitor model performance, data quality, latency, accuracy, and production issues.
• Participate in technical design, code reviews, testing, troubleshooting, and documentation.
• Follow enterprise security, governance, privacy, and software development standards.

Required Skills

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, data science, machine learning, or AI engineering.
• Strong hands-on Python programming.
• Strong understanding of Machine Learning and Deep Learning concepts.
• Experience with Scikit-learn, PyTorch and/or TensorFlow.
• Hands-on experience with Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Experience with RAG architectures and vector databases/search.
• Experience with NLP, embeddings, semantic search, and text-processing techniques.
• Experience with Prompt Engineering / Context Engineering.
• Experience with LangChain, LangGraph, Llama Index, or similar frameworks.
• Strong SQL and data-processing skills.
• Experience developing REST APIs / microservices.
• Experience with at least one major cloud platform: AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience with Git and modern CI/CD practices.
• Strong debugging, problem-solving, and communication skills.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with AI Agents / Agentic AI.
• Experience with Fine-tuning / PEFT / LoRA.
• Experience with vector databases such as Pinecone, FAISS, Weaviate, Milvus, or Azure AI Search.
• Experience with Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, Vertex AI, or equivalent AI platforms.
• Experience with MLOps and model deployment.
• Kubernetes/Docker experience.
• Kafka or other event-streaming technologies.
• Experience with financial services, banking, investment management, or other regulated industries.
• Knowledge of responsible AI, model governance, security, and data privacy.