AI Engineer

Direct Supply is seeking an AI Engineer to design, ship, and operate AI systems in production across the full product lifecycle. This on-site role in Illinois involves direct interaction with customers and ownership of solutions from discovery through deployment. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate needs into scalable AI-native solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate AI-enabled systems deployed in customer-facing production environments.
• Translate ambiguous business and customer problems into prototypes and clear technical specifications.
• Assess AI capabilities and apply them where they provide measurable leverage.
• Own the full application lifecycle: product discovery, experimentation, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
• Make system design decisions, weigh tradeoffs, and plan for long-term scalability and maintainability.
• Create readable, maintainable codebases for engineers and automate tooling to advance the organization.
• Collaborate with product managers to enhance product vision, including AI-native solutions.

Requirements

• Solid foundations in applied AI and software engineering.
• A self-starting builder who can span technology, product, and design thinking with high autonomy.
• Bias toward delivering and iterating based on customer feedback rather than polishing details.
• High ownership and agency, evaluated by outcomes rather than deliverables.
• Curiosity to improve systems, products, and professional craft.
• At least 2 years of experience in software engineering or applied AI.
• Experience using AI development tools within full-stack applications.
• Experience designing AI-based solutions for real workflows.
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms and frontier AI technologies.

Technologies

• Python
• C#
• TypeScript
• PostgreSQL
• Anthropic
• OpenAI
• Docker
• Terraform
• AWS

Benefits

• Generous benefit package available.

Nice to Have

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
• Experience operating AI systems in production with attention to evaluation, cost, and performance tradeoffs.
• Background in high-ambiguity environments with proximity to customers (e.g., early-stage startups, forward-deployed engineering, internal product teams).
• Experience working with large-scale Python, C#, and TypeScript codebases.
• Experience integrating AI solutions into existing, established products.
• Experience working with healthcare, regulated, or sensitive data.