Lead Search and AI Engineer

Job Title

Lead Search and AI Engineer

Tennessee Home Office

The Lead AI Engineer is to design, implement, and support AI-driven document processing, retrieval, and search solutions using Azure AI Search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Knowledge Graphs, Query Orchestration, Prompt Engineering, and Kubernetes-based container deployments.

• Architect & Deploy AI Solutions:
  Build AI-driven search and document intelligence systems using Azure AI Search, Knowledge Graphs, and RAG techniques.
• Query Orchestration:
  Develop strategies to route and structure user queries efficiently across multiple retrieval systems.
• RAG-Based Applications:
  Implement and fine-tune applications for intelligent knowledge retrieval from structured and unstructured documents.
• Containerized Deployments:
  Deploy and manage AI applications using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for scalability.
• Vector Search Optimization:
  Enhance document retrieval through optimized embeddings and hybrid search techniques.
• Open-Source Integration:
  Utilize tools like Tesseract OCR, PyMuPDF, and Pillow for document processing.
• API Integration:
  Connect with Profile APIs, Product Metadata, and Downloads to enrich indexing and search capabilities.
• Compliance & Security:
  Ensure adherence to export control restrictions and secure document handling best practices.
• Monitoring & Optimization:
  Troubleshoot and optimize AI-based workflows for performance and reliability.
• Stakeholder
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Work closely with business and technical teams to refine AI-powered document solutions.

• Bachelors or Masters Degree in Computer Science or related areas, applicable professional certification with 7+ years of progressive experience providing solutions in complex program/system problems in a business environment and 5+ years in AI/ML, cloud-based search, and document processing.
• Expertise in Query Orchestration for complex AI pipelines.
• Strong knowledge of RAG architectures for AI-powered search.
• Hands-on experience with Azure AI Search, Document Intelligence, and Cognitive Services.
• Proficiency in vector search, embeddings, and hybrid retrieval techniques.
• Experience with Kubernetes (AKS) and containerized deployments.
• Familiarity with Tesseract OCR, PyMuPDF, and Pillow.
• Strong Python development skills for AI pipelines.
• Specialized expertise in Search & RAG Semantic, BM25, similar ranking and vector search optimization.
• Custom scoring profiles and relevance tuning.
• Evaluation metrics (nDCG, MRR, precision@k).
• Query rewriting, synonym maps, and semantic expansion.
• Integration with RAG and LLM pipelines for optimized context retrieval.
• Prompt Engineering:
  Systematic prompt design and evaluation.
• RAG-oriented prompting with grounding and guardrails.
• Instruction hierarchies and multi-agent orchestration.
• Domain adaptation for EPRI’s technical language.
• Continuous improvement through telemetry and quality analysis.
• Understanding of export control compliance and secure document handling.

• Experience with hybrid cloud AI solutions (on-prem + cloud).
• Familiarity with Azure OpenAI, Lang Chain, or AI Foundry.
• Deep knowledge of multi-index query orchestration.
• Expertise in Azure AI search semantic and vector profiling.
• Expertise in other vector databases such as FAISS, Weaviate, Pinecone.
• Background in NLP, document classification, and entity extraction.

The salary range for this position is $145,000 USD to $175,000 USD annually. This salary range is an estimate, and the actual salary may vary based on various factors, including without limitation applicant's education, experience, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data. The salary may also be adjusted based on applicant's geographic location. This role is eligible to participate in EPRI’s annual incentive program.

This role is eligible to participate in EPRI’s standard employee benefit programs, which currently include the following: medical, dental, vision, 401k, STD/LTD and paid family leave, life and accident insurance, paid time off (flexible vacation, sick leave, and holiday pay).

EPRI is an equal opportunity employer. EEO/AA/M/F/VETS/Disabled.