AI Engineer

About the Role

SLR is seeking an AI Development Engineer who enjoys building AI systems that operate reliably in the real world. This role sits at the intersection of AI engineering, software development, and infrastructure, focusing on designing and implementing production‑grade systems powered by large language models (LLMs). You will work hands‑on across the full delivery lifecycle—moving quickly from concept to prototype to production.

Working closely with product, engineering, and data teams, you will help deliver intelligent applications built on modern AI infrastructure. We value practical builders over academic theory. Success is defined by your ability to design, implement, deploy, and operate real systems that deliver business value.

Design and implement systems across the AI stack, including:

• LLM‑powered applications and intelligent agents
• Model orchestration and tool‑use frameworks
• Retrieval systems and knowledge layers (RAG)
• MCP‑style integration layers connecting models to tools, APIs, and data sources
• Scalable infrastructure supporting AI workloads

• Build AI Systems:
  Design and implement production‑grade systems powered by LLMs and modern AI frameworks; develop applications using technologies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, LLM gateway, vector databases, and agent orchestration frameworks.
• Implement AI Infrastructure:
  Build and operate the infrastructure required to run reliable AI services, including API services, orchestration layers, retrieval pipelines, observability and monitoring, and scalable backend services.
• Develop MCP and Tool Integration Layers:
  Design integration layers that enable models to interact with external systems including API integrations, tool‑use systems for agents, connectors to databases, SaaS tools, or internal platforms, and structured prompting and function‑calling architectures.
• Ship Production Code:
  Move quickly from concept to working product; write clean, maintainable backend code; build testable services; deploy systems in production environments; iterate based on real user feedback.
• Collaborate Across Teams:
  Work closely with product managers, engineers, and designers to turn ideas into working solutions.

• Software Engineering Foundations:
  Strong backend engineering experience; proficiency in Python (preferred) or Type Script; experience building REST APIs and backend services; solid system design fundamentals; debugging and production troubleshooting skills; understanding of software development lifecycle.
• LLM Application Development:
  Experience building applications using large language models; prompt engineering and structured prompting; tool use and function calling;
  Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures; LLM evaluation and iterative improvement.
• Infrastructure and Deployment:
  Hands‑on experience deploying production systems;
  Docker and containerization; cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure); CI/CD pipelines; scalable service architecture.
• Data and Retrieval Systems:
  Experience building and operating knowledge layers; vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector); document ingestion pipelines; embedding workflows; search and retrieval optimization.

• MCP architectures or tool‑connected AI systems
• Agent frameworks
• Knowledge graph systems
• Streaming or event‑driven systems
• Distributed systems design
• Evaluation frameworks for AI systems

• Prefer building working systems over discussing them
• Move quickly while maintaining quality
• Enjoy solving messy, real‑world problems
• Take ownership from prototype through to production
• Stay curious about emerging AI capabilities

2–5 years of experience in software engineering, AI engineering, or ML systems.

• Shipped products
• Real systems running in production
• Open‑source contributions
• Side projects and experimentation

Role:
You will help build real AI systems at a time when the AI stack is still rapidly evolving. This role offers:

• Meaningful ownership and autonomy
• Real engineering challenges
• The opportunity to shape how intelligent software is designed, built, and deployed across SLR