Senior AI Cloud Engineer

Arizona State University is seeking a Senior Software Engineer, MCP / Full-Stack AI Platform Engineer to join the AI Acceleration Team within Enterprise Technology. This role will help design, build, and scale the technical infrastructure that enables ASU’s next generation of AI-powered learning, research, and operational tools. The engineer will focus on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which connects AI applications to external tools, data sources, workflows, and enterprise systems in a secure, governed way.

The successful candidate will serve as a senior technical contributor and architecture partner for ASU’s AI platform ecosystem, including CreateAI, ASU’s secure, model-agnostic AI platform. This person will build production-grade MCP servers, full-stack AI-enabled applications, APIs, AWS infrastructure, data integrations, and reusable patterns that help ASU safely connect AI systems to university services. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who is comfortable moving between architecture, backend development, frontend development, cloud infrastructure, security design, and stakeholder collaboration.

The ideal candidate is technically deep, product-minded, mission-driven, and excited to help ASU build tools for the future of learning. The AI Acceleration Team is responsible for helping ASU build, govern, and scale responsible AI capabilities across the institution. This role will help the team in building secure, agentic, tool-connected AI systems that can support meaningful university workflows.

• Building and maintaining secure AI infrastructure and platforms, including CreateAI
• Developing AI-powered tools that support learners, faculty, researchers, and staff
• Supporting enterprise integrations between AI systems and university data/services
• Partnering across ASU to build culture, literacy, trust, and responsible adoption around AI
• Advancing ASU’s vision for the future of learning through personalized, ethical, and accessible AI experiences

Salary Range: $140,000- $168,100/ Depends on Experience

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain production-grade MCP servers and clients.
• Implement MCP capabilities that allow AI applications to securely access approved tools, resources, prompts, and enterprise data.
• Develop reusable MCP templates, SDK wrappers, reference services, and starter patterns for ASU engineering teams.
• Integrate MCP-enabled services with CreateAI and other ASU AI applications.
• Track the evolving MCP specification and recommend updates to ASU implementation patterns.
• Evaluate emerging agentic interoperability standards beyond MCP and advise on practical adoption.

• Build full-stack applications and platform features that support AI-enabled workflows.
• Develop backend services, REST APIs, serverless functions, frontend interfaces, and integration layers.
• Develop backend services in Python, Node.js, or comparable languages.
• Implement secure user experiences that make complex AI capabilities accessible to non-technical users.
• Rapidly prototype AI-driven experiences, validate usability, and mature successful prototypes into reliable production systems.

• Design and implement AWS-native services using technologies such as:
• Lambda
• API Gateway
• S3
• DynamoDB
• Cloud Front
• SQS/SNS
• Event Bridge
• Cloud Watch
• Secrets Manager
• Open Search
• Bedrock
• Build infrastructure-as-code using Terraform or comparable tools.
• Design scalable, resilient, cost-conscious cloud architectures.
• Implement deployment pipelines, CI/CD workflows, automated testing, and operational monitoring.
• Troubleshoot performance, reliability, security, and cost issues in production systems.

• Partner with security and operations teams to define guardrails for MCP and AI integrations.
• Help assess risks such as:
• Over-permissioned tools
• Insecure third-party MCP servers
• Implement authentication and authorization using OAuth, OIDC, JWTs, scopes, service roles, and secrets management.
• Ensure AI integrations follow ASU expectations for privacy, FERPA-aware design, responsible innovation, and human-centered impact.
• Bui…