Senior AI Engineer I

RWE Americas is seeking a hands-on Senior AI Engineer I to deliver end-to-end AI capabilities from design through production operation. The role covers retrieval and context assembly, model and agentic logic, integration, monitoring and evaluation, and ongoing operational runbook maintenance, with emphasis on trustworthiness through testing and AI-specific security and responsible AI controls.

Role Overview

Own AI capabilities within a product or across multiple products, ensuring they are built for real-world operation. Scope includes retrieval and context assembly, model and agentic logic, integration with source systems and consuming applications, monitoring and evaluation, and runbook upkeep. The role also incorporates testing and controls for AI trustworthiness, including AI-specific security and responsible AI practices.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, operate, and own end-to-end AI capabilities spanning retrieval and context assembly; model and agentic logic; integration with source systems and consuming applications using APIs and MCPs; monitoring and evaluation; and operational runbook maintenance
• Train and evaluate machine learning models for well-scoped problems including classification, regression, anomaly detection, clustering, and forecasting using operational and commercial data, including determining when to apply ML models versus simpler statistical baselines
• Build retrieval and context pipelines for enterprise content using chunking, tagging, and a metadata strategy, and measure retrieval quality against a defined standard
• Design and maintain evaluation for AI capabilities, including offline evals, automated scoring such as LLM-as-judge, and regression tests that run on every prompt or pipeline change prior to release; monitor quality and drift signals in production
• Own inference cost and latency in production by tracking cost per transaction and end-to-end response time, profiling where time is spent, and making tradeoffs to meet agreed targets
• Implement human-in-the-loop and AI-specific security controls, including shadow and assisted modes, confidence and citation surfaces, override capture, audit trails, identity-scoped retrieval, input and output guardrails, tool permissions, and prompt injection resistance
• Complete handover for application components delivered by technical partners, including reading the code, closing operational gaps, updating the runbook, and maintaining components in production
• Improve team efficiency through reusable components and reference examples, code review, and onboarding new engineers

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, another STEM field, or a related discipline
• At least 5 years of relevant experience in software or AI/ML engineering roles, with demonstrated end-to-end ownership of AI or ML capabilities from design through operation in a production environment
• Depth in two or three of the capability areas in the role’s basic function, with working familiarity across the rest
• Production experience with Python and SQL, a major cloud platform, version control and code review, containerized deployment, and CI/CD for AI products and services
• Hands-on experience with current orchestration, agent, and retrieval frameworks
• Practical experience developing ML models for supervised and unsupervised problems
• Experience building and maintaining evaluation and regression testing for AI and ML systems
• Working knowledge of AI-specific security and responsible AI controls
• Competent use of coding agents and other AI-assisted tooling, including scoping tasks appropriately, reviewing generated code, and recognizing tasks that are poor fits for delegation

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with IT/OT environments, industrial data sources, or operational technology systems
• Experience in the power, utilities, or clean energy sector, including knowledge of U.S. power markets, renewable project development, and clean energy technologies

Technologies

• Python, SQL
• APIs, MCPs
• CI/CD
• LLM-as-judge
• Machine learning
• Cloud platform
• Containerized deployment
• Orchestration frameworks, agent frameworks, retrieval frameworks
• Coding agents
• Version control

Location

Onsite: Chicago, IL, US (60654) and Austin, TX, US (78701). The employee is office-based with some travel and visits to other RWE Americas offices and field locations.

The employee must be able to sit, walk, or stand for long durations of time.

Compensation and Additional Pay

• Annual base salary range in Illinois: $127,000 - $171,000
• Eligible employees also participate in short-term incentives, in addition to salary

Benefits

• Medical, Dental, Vision
• Life Insurance
• Short-Term Disability, Long-Term Disability
• 401(k) match
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• EAP
• Education Assistance
• Parental Leave
• Paid time off
• Holidays

Work Authorization

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States. RWE Americas is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visas at this time.

Contact

Email HR: [email protected]