AI Engineer (Chatbot/.NET)

Job Title: AI Engineer (Chatbot/.NET)

Location: 100% Remote

Duration: long term contract

We are looking for an AI Engineer Consultant with LM application development skills to be an important part of our effort to incorporate the latest innovative AI agentic services into our solutions. We use some of the latest LLMs offered in Azure AI Foundry along with some core foundational technologies such as .NET, SQL Server and Angular. Successful candidates will possess a passion for technology, seeking out and learning the best options for solving problems. The AI Engineer Consultant will often take a lead role in the design and development of AI related features and capabilities with an eye to deliver best in class software.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Maintain our goal: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

• Use Agile methodologies to deliver solutions that will support our customers, mainly using the Scrum framework to support solution development, implementation, and support.

• Work in a team environment to build our solutions, and with regular retrospection, improve our team culture and processes through continuous inspection.

• Lead in team AI related technical discussions where design ideas are presented and reviewed resulting in a team decision on the best approach.

• Lead in AI systems design, design reviews, software development, code reviews, quality engineering, and continuous integration and continuous delivery.

• Assist with the creation of necessary technical documentation in support of programming and design activities such as design diagrams, release notes, code comments, use cases, and training materials.

• Provide support to internal and external clients currently utilizing software applications, including assisting with the delivery of solutions.

• Assist with training, including developing training materials and delivering training to staff.

• Perform knowledge transference of best AI engineering practices within the client's software engineering discipline.

• Ability to research, prototype, and promote new technical approaches, designs, and tools among other new innovative concepts.

• Collaborate with Architecture discipline to ensure compliance with corporate Architecture standards and to assist in extending the standards for AI enabled applications.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, ABILITIES, AND COMPETENCIES
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Preferred familiarity with, or desire and ability to learn:

• Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript

• Utilization of technologies such as C#, .Net, and MS SQL Server

• Model Context Protocol implementation and usage

• Fine tuning using model distillation for domain specific model adaptation

• Tools such as Visual Studio (VS), Team Foundation Server (TFS), GIT, etc.

• Automation testing for quality engineering disciplines such as unit testing, smoke testing, and integration tests

• Continuous integration and continuous delivery tools (Azure DevOps).

• Understanding of potential performance, security, scalability and maintainability issues.

• Successful candidates will have substantial knowledge of:

• Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Services and Agent frameworks/tools such as Semantic Kernel or LangChain

• Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) with embedding models and vector databases

• Prompt Engineering techniques for response output customization

• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

• .Net Framework & .NET Core

• Web API design and implementation

• Software patterns (Dependency injection, MVC, etc.)

• Code management best practices and one or more tools (TFS, Git, etc.)

• Requires ability to:

• Function on an Agile (Scrum) team utilizing ADO for task management and source control.

• Independently analyze requirements to determine how applications function to build effective designs and tests.

• Use industry standard design patterns.

• Lead implementation of testing methodologies geared towards AI applications

• Learn and follow client s Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

• Grow as a subject matter expert within the solution as it relates to the business requirements, implementation and delivery of software, data within platform, and the software artifacts themselves.

• Monitor and check work deliverables ensuring high quality, accuracy and having a strong attention to detail.

• Prioritize competing demands, manage multiple concurrent tasks and adapt to changing priorities.

• Independently engineer a feature or epic from ideation with product owner to delivery of those specified items, while understanding the impact in relation to the rest of the software platform and associated business.

• Oral Communication: Requires the ability to compose and verbally deliver information of varying levels, using appropriate grammar, tone, inflection and non-verbal cues, while also listening to and correctly deciphering verbal communication delivered by others.

• Written Communication: Requires the ability and capacity to communicate ideas, facts and data in writing using appropriate grammar, syntax and sentence structure including the ability to create technical documents.

• Analytical Thinking/Reasoning: Requires the ability to understand a situation by breaking it apart into smaller pieces, and/or tracing the implications of a situation in a step-by-step causal way.

• Results Orientation: Requires the ability to strive for optimal results by taking responsibility for timeliness, commitment to task and adherence to performance standards.

• Ethics/Integrity: Requires the ability to behave in a trustworthy & transparent manner.

• Teamwork & Cooperation: Requires the ability to work cooperatively with others and be part of a team.

• Self-Control: Requires the ability to keep emotions under control and to restrain from negative actions or behaviors.

• Information Seeking: Requires the drive to gain a deeper understanding of work-related issues or events by making a concerted effort to gather information and seek out development opportunities.

• Initiative: Requires the drive to go above and beyond to improve or enhance job results.

• Concern for Order, Quality & Accuracy: Requires the ability to monitor and check work related information and deliverables ensuring high quality and accuracy.

• Customer Service Orientation: Requires the ability to understand and help/assist both internal and external customers and meet their needs.

• Flexibility/Adaptability: Requires the ability to adapt to and work effectively within a variety of situations, individuals or groups, as well as understand and appreciate different and opposing perspectives.

• Conceptual Thinking/Critical Thinking: Requires the ability to understand a situation or problem by putting the different pieces together to see the bigger picture.

• Interpersonal Understanding: Requires the ability to understand other s feelings and concerns, and to value individual differences in people.

• Self-Confidence: Requires the ability to express confidence in dealing with challenging circumstances, in reaching decisions or forming opinions and in handling failures or setbacks constructively.Organizational Commitment: Requires the ability and willingness to align his/her own behavior with the needs, priorities and goals of the organization.

• Relationship Building: Requires the ability to effectively build and maintain friendly, warm relationships or networks of contacts with clients/customers.

• Assertiveness: Requires the ability and intent to appropriately display assertive behaviors to ensure others follow and comply with given directions.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• Must have Baccalaureate degree in an appropriate IT field such as Computer Science or Computer Engineering from an accredited U.S. college or university, equivalent foreign institution, or equivalent experience.

• Must have a minimum of five years relevant work experience.