Location/Remote: Hybrid in Phoenix, AZ 85007 (local candidates only)
Employment Type: 12-month contract-to-hire (W-2), with potential conversion to permanent employment
Compensation: Up to $67/hour W-2 (commensurate with experience)
Clearance: Must be able to obtain and maintain an Arizona Level One Fingerprint Clearance Card.
Benefits: Medical, dental, vision, short-term and long-term disability (STD/LTD), HSA/FSA, term life insurance, and supplemental health insurance options (e.g., Aflac) for eligible employees and their families.
This Senior AI Applications Developer role focuses on designing, developing, and implementing secure artificial intelligence solutions that reduce administrative workload, streamline business operations, and improve organizational efficiency. The ideal candidate combines hands-on AI application development experience with strong requirements-gathering skills and the ability to translate complex business processes into practical technical solutions.
You will work directly with business stakeholders and technical teams to identify opportunities for AI automation, evaluate existing enterprise AI platforms, and architect custom AI applications when existing tools cannot meet operational requirements. Projects involve large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), advanced prompt engineering, AI agents, and secure enterprise integrations.
Success requires independently delivering functional AI solutions, balancing technical architecture with business needs, maintaining comprehensive documentation, and ensuring AI applications meet organizational security, privacy, and responsible AI standards.
Responsibilities:
Collaborate with business stakeholders to understand operational workflows, gather requirements, identify inefficiencies, and translate business needs into detailed technical specifications.
Evaluate opportunities for AI-driven automation and determine whether existing enterprise AI tools or custom-developed solutions provide the most effective approach.
Architect, prototype, develop, test, and deploy custom AI applications within secure, controlled enterprise environments.
Design and implement AI solutions using large language models (LLMs), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, vector databases, and advanced prompt engineering.
Develop and integrate AI agents, automated workflows, and custom applications that reduce repetitive administrative tasks and improve operational accuracy.
Leverage approved enterprise AI platforms, including Google Cloud Vertex AI, Gemini, NotebookLM, and Microsoft Azure AI technologies.
Develop applications and integrations using appropriate programming languages, frameworks, databases, and cloud services.
Design and implement RAG pipelines that retrieve organizational information and produce accurate, contextually relevant AI responses.
Configure AI safety controls, guardrails, and validation processes to address hallucinations, bias, data privacy, and security vulnerabilities.
Collaborate with technical teams on AI solution architecture, systems integration, cloud infrastructure, and application deployment.
Evaluate AI model performance, troubleshoot application issues, and refine solutions based on testing results and stakeholder feedback.
Apply responsible AI principles covering fairness, reliability, safety, privacy, security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.
Maintain comprehensive technical documentation covering application code, system architecture, AI prompts, integrations, workflows, and operational procedures.
Participate in software development activities, including requirements analysis, design, coding, unit testing, user acceptance testing, deployment, and production support.
Follow established Agile development methodologies, software engineering standards, and change management procedures.
Support AI application lifecycle management, including version control, CI/CD processes, model monitoring, and continuous improvement.
Communicate AI capabilities, limitations, technical trade-offs, and implementation recommendations to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
Evaluate emerging AI technologies and recommend practical improvements to existing applications and development processes.
Required Skills:
Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence or a related AI-focused discipline, or at least 2 years of hands-on AI experience.
Demonstrated experience gathering business requirements, analyzing operational processes, and translating stakeholder needs into actionable technical specifications.
Hands-on experience developing, implementing, or integrating AI-powered applications and solutions.
Working knowledge of large language models (LLMs), generative AI, prompt engineering, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) concepts.
Ability to independently evaluate business problems, recommend appropriate technical approaches, and implement practical AI solutions.
Strong understanding of software development processes, including analysis, design, coding, testing, troubleshooting, and deployment.
Familiarity with enterprise application architecture, databases, systems integration, and secure development practices.
Understanding of responsible AI principles, including model reliability, data privacy, security, transparency, and risk management.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, technical documentation, and written and verbal communication skills.
Ability to collaborate effectively with business stakeholders, technical teams, and cross-functional partners.
Ability to independently manage multiple priorities, incorporate stakeholder feedback, and adapt to evolving AI technologies.
Must be able to obtain and maintain the required Arizona Level One Fingerprint Clearance Card.
Must reside locally in the Phoenix metropolitan area and be available for hybrid onsite work.
Must be eligible to convert to permanent employment without employer visa sponsorship.
Preferred Skills:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline, with extensive software development experience; approximately 10+ years of programming and systems analysis experience is preferred.
Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
Hands-on experience implementing Microsoft Azure OpenAI solutions, including Azure AI Foundry and related Azure AI services.
Proficiency developing applications using Python, SQL, and C#/.NET.
Experience with Google Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform), Vertex AI, Gemini, and NotebookLM.
Experience designing and building retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines using embeddings, vector databases, and enterprise knowledge sources.
Experience with advanced prompt engineering, foundation model fine-tuning, and AI agent development.
Familiarity with Azure cloud architecture, including compute, storage, networking, and secure AI application deployment.
Experience configuring Azure AI Content Safety, implementing AI guardrails, and evaluating model outputs for bias, hallucinations, and security risks.
Familiarity with Microsoft Responsible AI principles and the Azure Machine Learning Responsible AI Dashboard.
Experience with MLOps practices, AI application monitoring, model lifecycle management, and CI/CD pipelines.
Experience working with multiple programming languages, database management systems, and enterprise development platforms.
Experience using GitHub Copilot or comparable AI-assisted software development tools for coding, documentation, and testing.
Familiarity with Agile development practices, automated testing frameworks, and enterprise software governance.
Experience building secure AI applications in government, public-sector, regulated, or other security-sensitive environments.
