Senior Applied AI Engineer / Forward Deployed Engineer

Trissential is hiring a Senior Applied AI Engineer / Forward Deployed Engineer to join their client’s team and help design, build, and deploy AI solutions that solve real business problems in complex enterprise environments. The role focuses on developing production-ready AI systems that create measurable business value while collaborating with stakeholders to understand workflows and deliver tailored solutions.

Responsibilities:

• Partner with business and technical stakeholders to understand workflows, challenges, and success metrics
• Translate ambiguous problems into clear technical solutions, designs, and delivery plans
• Design and build AI-powered applications using LLMs, APIs, and enterprise data systems
• Develop production-grade backend services using Python and frameworks like FastAPI or Flask
• Build and maintain RAG systems, including: – Document ingestion and normalization – Chunking, metadata, and embedding strategies – Vector, keyword, and hybrid search – Reranking and relevance tuning – Source attribution and grounding
• Integrate AI solutions with SharePoint, Microsoft Graph, SQL databases, internal APIs, and business applications
• Design secure systems that respect access control, governance, and enterprise compliance requirements
• Build observable, reliable, and maintainable AI workflows in production environments
• Establish evaluation frameworks for LLM systems (accuracy, groundedness, latency, completeness, and failure modes)
• Iterate rapidly through prototypes, pilots, and production releases based on user feedback
• Collaborate with engineering, data, security, and product teams to ensure adoption and long-term sustainability
• Make pragmatic technology choices across Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, and open-source tools
• Document architecture, decisions, trade-offs, and operational requirements

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, applied AI, or enterprise systems
• Strong Python development experience building production-grade APIs or services
• Hands-on experience with large language model applications
• Experience with Azure OpenAI Service, OpenAI APIs, or similar platforms
• Proven experience designing and building RAG systems
• Strong understanding of prompt design, grounding, context management, and LLM limitations
• Experience integrating with enterprise data sources, APIs, and document systems
• Ability to work directly with business stakeholders and translate needs into working solutions
• Experience working within secure, governed enterprise environments
• Strong communication, systems thinking, and problem-solving skills
• Ability to balance speed, usability, scalability, and maintainability
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience)
• Experience in a forward-deployed, consulting, or solutions engineering role
• Hands-on experience with Azure AI Search or similar vector/hybrid search platforms
• Experience with reranking, relevance tuning, and retrieval evaluation
• Familiarity with frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, or Semantic Kernel
• Experience with LLM evaluation frameworks and quality measurement
• Background in building AI agents or workflow automation systems
• Experience with Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Graph API, or Copilot Studio
• Familiarity with Azure AI Foundry or similar tooling
• Cloud architecture, CI/CD, observability, and production support experience in Azure
• Microsoft or Azure certifications are a plus but not required