Senior AI Engineer

Senior AI Engineer Contract | Remote (US)| CPG & Media/Entertainment Focus About the Role You will be the senior AI technical lead embedded within a pod delivering AI-powered solutions for enterprise clients in CPG, media, and sports. The clients are large, the problems are real, and the solutions you build will touch millions of consumers. Day to day, you will architect and build AI systems that solve specific business problems — content generation at scale, intelligent automation workflows, data-driven personalization. You will work alongside a Data Engineer and an AI Strategist/PM, and you are the person who translates "we want AI to do X" into a working system that actually does it. This is a hands-on building role with real technical decision-making authority. You will evaluate which models to use, how to architect the pipeline, whether a problem calls for fine-tuning or RAG or an agent-based approach. You own the technical direction within your pod and you ship production-quality work. Responsibilities • Architect and build AI/ML solutions for enterprise CPG and media clients, with a focus on content automation, personalization, and intelligent workflows. • Design and implement LLM-powered pipelines — RAG systems, agent workflows, prompt chains, and tool-calling architectures — that run reliably in production. • Evaluate and select the right AI approach for each problem: fine-tuning vs. RAG vs. agent-based systems vs. simpler prompt engineering. • Build production-grade APIs and services that integrate AI capabilities into existing client platforms and content systems. • Collaborate closely with the AI Strategist/PM to translate business requirements into technical specifications and realistic delivery timelines. • Work with the Data Engineer to ensure data pipelines, feature stores, and model inputs are properly architected and performant. • Write and maintain evals, monitoring, and quality assurance systems for LLM outputs in production. • Rapidly prototype and build proof-of-concept solutions to validate ideas before committing to full implementation. Qualifications • 5+ years of software engineering experience with at least 2 years focused on AI/ML systems in production environments. • Hands-on experience building with LLMs in production: RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, prompt engineering, tool calling, and evals. Not just prototypes. • Strong Python skills with experience in AI frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex, PydanticAI, or similar). • Experience building and deploying APIs and services (FastAPI, Flask, or equivalent) that serve AI capabilities at scale. • Solid understanding of when to use different AI approaches — fine-tuning, RAG, agents, embeddings, traditional ML — and the trade-offs of each. • Experience working in consulting, agency, or services environments where you deliver solutions for external clients. • Background in CPG, media, sports, or entertainment industries is strongly valued. Preferred Skills • Experience with AI-driven content generation or content automation at enterprise scale. • Familiarity with vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate) and retrieval-augmented generation patterns. • Experience with agentic frameworks and orchestration patterns (PydanticAI, LangGraph, CrewAI, or custom implementations). • Exposure to computer vision or multimodal AI applications in creative/content contexts. • Background blending AI engineering with creative or design-oriented applications. Tech Stack Python, LLM APIs (Claude, GPT, Gemini), RAG frameworks, vector databases, FastAPI, Docker, AWS/GCP, CI/CD. The specific tools vary by client and engagement. This is a pod-based engagement where you work as the technical lead alongside a Data Engineer and AI Strategist/PM. If you are the kind of engineer who thrives when you can own the technical direction and ship AI systems that solve real business problems for major brands, this is your role. Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.