Lead AI Integration Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Costa Rica.

📋 Description

• Conceptualize, develop, and implement intelligent backend services utilizing Python and Azure AI Foundry.

• Integrate Force Account outputs through APIs, ensuring the system effectively displays and processes data classification and extraction.

• Design and refine Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines over Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to deliver contextual, precise, and actionable insights to users.

• Provide assistive intelligence directly on cases, seamlessly embedding AI outputs into the end-user’s workflow.

• Establish and rigorously maintain a redact-before-model protocol, ensuring that all Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is removed from payloads prior to reaching any foundational model.

• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering teams to develop AI features and translate business objectives into technical implementations.

• Proactively identify opportunities for AI-driven automation and product enhancements, creating prototypes to demonstrate value.

• Mentor junior engineers and promote secure, responsible AI coding practices within your team.

• Troubleshoot AI-specific technical issues, including prompt injection vulnerabilities, model latency, and data leakage.

• Provide guidance to team members on model selection, assessment, fine-tuning, and Gen AI utilization.

• Continuously assess emerging LLM tools, agentic frameworks, and open-source advancements for relevance to client projects.

• Oversee the architecture of the team's agentic and LLM systems — including agent orchestration, tool integration (e.g., Model Context Protocol), retrieval, and human-in-the-loop design.

• Develop and implement evaluation frameworks for LLM and agentic systems, encompassing correctness, boundary, and intent checks as a standard part of delivery.

• Promote the adoption of the agentic SDLC across the team: select and implement AI engineering tools, define usage and governance standards, and evaluate their impact on delivery speed and quality.

• Establish responsible AI and evaluation frameworks for agentic systems — including guardrails, safety testing, human oversight, and model governance.

⛳️ Requirements

• At least 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with a minimum of 2+ years of hands-on experience integrating LLMs and developing AI-driven applications.

• Proven experience in architecting and deploying LLM-based or agentic systems in production environments, including prompt design, retrieval architecture, and tool/function calling (e.g., MCP).

• Practical experience with leading LLMs and APIs, such as OpenAI, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude.

• Experience in evaluating and choosing open-source and proprietary LLMs (e.g., OpenAI via Azure AI Foundry) based on criteria like accuracy, latency, scalability, cost, and overall effectiveness for production AI solutions.

• Familiarity with vector stores and embeddings (LangChain, LlamaIndex, etc.).

• High proficiency in English is required for effective communication with a globally distributed development team and client stakeholders.

• Extensive expertise in Python for backend services and AI integration (replacing traditional Java/C# requirements).

• Demonstrated hands-on experience utilizing Azure AI Foundry for building, deploying, and managing AI models and agents.

• Proven ability to create and manage complex API integrations for data ingestion, extraction, and classification.

• Strong understanding of security engineering, particularly in implementing PII redaction, anonymization pipelines, and secure data handling within AI workflows.

• Experience in delivering well-tested, scalable, secure, and high-performance enterprise-level systems that meet client business objectives.

• A strong track record of working within Agile software development methodologies.

• Proficiency in AI-assisted development tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) as an integral part of daily operations, including pipeline construction, test generation, and documentation.

🏝️ Benefits

• Medical Insurance benefits in accordance with company policy.

• Life Insurance as per company policy.

• 12 days of paid vacation, sick leave, and paid holidays in accordance with local law.

• Paternity and maternity leave as per local law.

• Leave for marriage, bereavement, and graduation as per company policy.

• Sick leave and paid holidays according to local law.

• Christmas bonus in accordance with local law.

• Saving Fund "Asociacion Solidarista".

• Access to a beach house (Managed by the Asociacion Solidarista).

• Discounts at local shops.

• Direct deposit of payroll.

• Coverage for professional certification costs.