Senior AI Engineer

Who We Are

WillowTree is a leading digital consultancy that partners with the world’s most admired brands to orchestrate winning experiences across the customer journey. Experiences that are personalized, on-brand, and consistent across channels and platforms. Experiences that can both drive customer delight and reduce operating costs.

Our services include digital strategy consulting, product development, brand and experience design, digital marketing, and data and AI services. WillowTree’s client roster spans industries and growth stages, including T-Mobile, Marriott, Allianz, Dexcom, PepsiCo, Brightline Trains, Synchrony Financial, Domino’s, and Dairy Queen. Check out how we have impacted our clients' digital portfolios over the years.

In January 2023, WillowTree was acquired by TELUS Digital (Symbol: TIXT), a leading provider of next-generation digital customer experience (CX) solutions for global and disruptive brands. The combined firm brings an unparalleled ability to deliver seamless, trusted, digitally-enabled experiences across any channel a customer might choose — including mobile apps, websites, voice UI, chatbots, email, customer service agents, and retail associates.

Location and Flexibility

Our Sr. AI Engineer is an integral part of our AI team at WillowTree. To ensure the Sr. AI Engineer can maximize their impact, this role will maintain an in-office presence in a hybrid capacity (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays) in one of our offices: Charlottesville, VA (HQ), Durham, NC, Columbus, OH, or Boston, MA

The Opportunity

We are seeking a proficient AI Engineer passionate about turning AI research into tangible, effective solutions within our long-term client projects. As an AI Engineer, you will be building Fuel iX (www.fuelix.ai), a WillowTree AI platform that helps enterprises manage and accelerate AI-fueled Intelligent Experiences (iX). This role is pivotal in enhancing and evolving our industry-leading AI engine, ensuring it delivers flexibility, control, productivity, and trust to enterprises worldwide.

Responsibilities 

• Apply your knowledge of software engineering and AI systems to develop AI solutions that directly address and resolve business problems.
• Partner with Data Science professionals who specialize in machine learning and statistical modeling to address complex technical challenges, ensuring that the latest and most effective AI techniques are utilized.
• Take ownership of implementing and optimizing applied AI components, ensuring they meet project needs with high complexity and scale.
• Navigate and manipulate generative AI models, including large language models, to create prompts and solutions tailored to specific use cases.
• Develop and incorporate AI solutions while adhering to industry best practices, including moderation, security, and compliance standards.
• Lead the charge in designing, measuring, and evaluating AI model outputs, developing standard and custom metrics to ensure alignment with business objectives.
• Translate AI research into production-ready features, delivering robust and scalable AI components that integrate seamlessly with larger systems.
• Drive the selection and application of appropriate evaluation metrics, ensuring that AI solutions are robust, unbiased, and meet all necessary performance standards.

Qualifications

• Demonstrable experience in applied AI, with a foundation in machine learning, deep learning, NLP, LLMs, and statistical analysis.
• Strong understanding of the trade-offs between various generative AI models and the ability to choose the right model for specific use cases.
• Experience with data embeddings and vector databases, understanding the trade-off between available options, and leveraging it to optimize data ingestion.
• Experience building and testing a major server-side platform (such as TypeScript/Express, Java/Spring, Python/Django, C#/.NET, Ruby/Rails, etc) for API development and orchestration. 
• Experience leveraging CI/CD tools such as AWS CodeDeploy, Azure Pipelines, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins.
• Hands-on experience deploying software on leading cloud platforms and utilizing AI tools like AWS Bedrock and Azure AI Services.
• Experience with performance optimization and observability platforms.
• Proficiency in conducting experiment tracking and implementing complex AI integrations with minimal oversight.
• Ability to communicate complex AI solutions and concepts effectively to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Skilled in creating and adjusting prompts for complex AI syste