AI Engineer

Job Title

AI Engineer III

Location-Type

Must be located in CO currently; Westminster (hybrid) Relocation will not be considered at this time.

Start Date

ASAP

Duration

Contract, 6 months with potential to extend or convert

Compensation Range

$110.50/hr - $130.00/hr

Benefits

Eligible for Health, Dental, Vision, and 401K

Visa Sponsorship

Not eligible for visa sponsorship

Job Description

The AI Engineer III serves as the technical lead for AI solution design and delivery, guiding the client's newly formed AI team from discovery through production across cloud and on-premises environments.

Job Summary

• Lead discovery workshops with business stakeholders to identify processes, pain points, and opportunities for AI.
• Design and build AI applications, agents, copilots, and intelligent automation using platforms such as Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry, and Databricks.
• Develop and deploy generative AI solutions incorporating agentic orchestration frameworks, RAG architectures, guardrails, evaluation, and observability.
• Define and implement LLMOps standards covering model evaluation frameworks, release gates, prompt versioning, rollback procedures, and incident runbooks.
• Establish production readiness criteria and cost management for AI workloads, including dashboards for usage, spend, latency, quality, and drift.
• Mentor engineers and establish engineering standards, reusable patterns, and best practices across the team.
• Partner with data, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and business teams to ensure compliant and governed delivery of AI solutions.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related field; candidates without a degree must hold one or more AI certifications (e.g., Claude Certified Architect, Microsoft AI Agent Builder, Microsoft Agentic AI Architect, Databricks Gen AI Engineer Associate, or equivalent).
• Must currently reside in Colorado - relocation will not be considered at this time
• 1 year of AI engineering experience with a machine learning or data engineering background.
• 3 years of experience in analytics or machine learning.
• Proficiency in Python with solid software engineering practices including APIs, version control, CI/CD, and automated testing.
• Hands-on experience building agents across Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure, and Databricks.
• Deep experience with LLMs, RAG architectures, agentic systems, guardrails, and evaluations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with on-premises AI capabilities including local model inference infrastructure (e.g., llama.cpp, vLLM), LoRA fine-tuning, and model testing.
• Familiarity with vector databases and hybrid search solutions (e.g., Azure AI Search, pgvector, Databricks Vector Search).
• Experience with multi-agent orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph or Semantic Kernel, and Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Hands-on experience with time-series forecasting, anomaly detection, classification, and clustering techniques.
• Experience with document intelligence including OCR, layout extraction, and structured data extraction.