Sr. AI Engineer

The Sr. AI Engineer (Forward Deployed) at Cynosure, LLC works as an embedded software engineer and technical consultant with business stakeholders to turn ambiguous requirements into governed AI and automation solutions, from discovery through production deployment and adoption.

Location and Work Model

Westford, MA (hybrid).

Compensation

USD 150,000 - 190,000 per year.

Role Summary

This position translates business goals into working AI and automation capabilities, including solution design, implementation, and support. Initial focus is on extending Microsoft enterprise AI and automation offerings such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and the Power Platform. The role then expands into more advanced, purpose-built enterprise use cases.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with leaders, functional teams, and end users to understand business goals, map current workflows, identify pain points, and define opportunities for AI and automation.
• Run discovery workshops and convert business needs into use cases, requirements, solution options, expected benefits, risk considerations, and success measures.
• Assess and prioritize opportunities using a standardized business case covering business value, cost, feasibility, data readiness, security, compliance, user impact, risk, time-to-value, scalability, and total cost of ownership.
• Design, prototype, code, configure, test, integrate, deploy, and support AI and automation solutions using Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, Copilot agents, Copilot Studio, Power Platform, Azure AI services, APIs, and suitable software-development frameworks.
• Provide primary accountability for solution design and implementation while coordinating with the VP, AI Transformation and Information Systems stakeholders on feasibility, architecture, effort, dependencies, and delivery risk; support intake, prioritization, benefits tracking, and executive reporting as the AI operating model evolves.
• Lead assigned solutions with autonomy, balancing rapid experimentation with enterprise standards; document technical decisions, manage delivery commitments, and escalate material risks or dependencies early.
• Build and maintain reusable prompts, agent instructions, workflows, connectors, templates, and solution patterns, including documentation and inventory for approved capability discovery, governance, support, and scaling.
• Collaborate with Information Systems, Information Security, Legal, Privacy, Data, and business process owners to ensure enterprise architecture alignment, responsible AI practices, data protection, and access-control requirements, including human oversight and production support responsibilities.
• Evaluate data, content, integration, and process readiness; design secure connections across systems including Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, and other platforms; identify dependencies and recommend pragmatic remediation or phased delivery approaches.
• Create proofs of concept and minimum viable solutions; validate feasibility and business value; collect user feedback; iterate toward secure, reliable, scalable, observable, maintainable, and supported production deployments with documented architecture, testing, performance, continuity, and support requirements.
• Define and track adoption and quality measures, active usage, time and capacity recaptured, cycle-time reduction, risk indicators, reuse, and business-value metrics; communicate outcomes, limitations, and learnings to business and executive stakeholders.
• Enable users through demonstrations, office hours, documentation, training, community engagement, and practical guidance to build AI fundamentals, prompting skills, and safe adoption practices.
• Troubleshoot technical and operational issues; coordinate with internal teams and vendors; identify recurring needs; provide actionable feedback to technology owners; and improve solution performance, reliability, usability, and maintainability.
• Stay current on emerging AI, agentic, and automation capabilities; inventory licensed capabilities; evaluate vendor and architecture fit and recommend extend, buy, build, or external partner options.
• Embody and live the company Values.
• Travel internationally as required (up to 15% of time).

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required.
• Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Science, Engineering, or a closely related technical field.
• 5+ years of relevant experience.
• Five or more years of experience in software engineering, solutions engineering, technical consulting, solutions architecture, or a related field, including hands-on delivery of AI, data, integration, low-code, or automation solutions.
• Experience working directly with business stakeholders from discovery and business-case development through architecture, prototyping, production deployment, adoption, and value measurement.
• Hands-on experience with at least one enterprise AI platform; Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Power Platform, Azure AI services, or comparable technologies are strongly preferred, including experience evaluating whether to extend, buy, or build solutions.
• Exceptional consulting, active listening, facilitation, and relationship-building skills, including building trust, surfacing competing needs, and establishing shared ownership.
• Strong business-process analysis and problem framing to translate ambiguous needs into use cases, requirements, experiments, solution options, delivery plans, and measurable success criteria.
• Hands-on knowledge of generative AI, prompt and context engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, agents and multi-agent patterns, workflow automation, APIs, integrations, and evaluation methods for grounding, accuracy, reliability, safety, latency, and cost.
• Demonstrated experience building enterprise solutions with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, Copilot Studio, Power Automate, Power Apps, SharePoint, Teams, Microsoft Graph, Dataverse, Azure AI services, or related Microsoft technologies.
• Demonstrated ability to design, build, test, debug, deploy, and maintain solutions using Python and at least one enterprise application language such as JavaScript, TypeScript, or C#, with SQL, REST APIs, source control, cloud services, and modern software-development practices.
• Ability to design secure, governed integrations between AI agents and enterprise tools, APIs, applications, and data sources, including authentication, authorization, identity, permissions, privacy, compliance, responsible AI, and human-in-the-loop controls.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to explain technical concepts, architectural trade-offs, risks, and recommendations to nontechnical audiences and executive stakeholders.
• Demonstrated change-management and user-enablement skills, including training, documentation, demonstrations, community engagement, and adoption support.
• Outcome orientation, including defining value hypotheses and measuring adoption, efficiency, quality, risk reduction, reuse, and business impact.

Technologies

• Microsoft 365 Copilot; Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat; Copilot agents; Copilot Studio
• Power Automate; Power Platform; Power Apps
• Azure AI services; Microsoft Graph; Dataverse; Microsoft 365; Teams; SharePoint
• CRM (Salesforce); ERP (SAP); ServiceNow; APIs
• Python; JavaScript; TypeScript; C#; SQL; REST APIs
• Retrieval-augmented generation; agents and multi-agent patterns; workflow automation; human-in-the-loop controls
• Model Context Protocol (MCP); Azure OpenAI; Azure AI Foundry

Physical and Travel Requirements

• Sit; use hands to finger, handle or feel objects, tools, or controls.
• Stand; walk; reach with hands and arms; and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl.
• Other: Domestic and International travel (approx. 15%), including extended flights and work across multiple time zones.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience delivering production AI solutions, agentic workflows, retrieval-augmented generation, custom copilots, Azure AI Foundry or Azure OpenAI solutions, data pipelines, enterprise integrations, DevOps and CI/CD practices, observability, automated testing, and secure cloud application development.
• Experience designing, deploying, or governing Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and familiarity with Microsoft Work IQ, Microsoft IQ, or comparable enterprise intelligence, semantic grounding, and agent-context capabilities.