Staff / Principal AI Engineer

In Gilbert, Arizona, this onsite opportunity from Vaco by Highspring targets a Staff or Principal AI Engineer to shape and deliver the next generation of AI powered products, platforms, and internal capabilities. The role fuses hands-on technical leadership with a product mindset to extend AI across customer facing offerings and internal operations. The position offers a compensation range of USD 170,000 to 190,000 per year and requires at least eight years of experience.

Responsibilities

• Drive the design, development, and deployment of scalable AI and machine learning solutions across product lines and internal business use cases.
• Architect generative AI systems, LLM powered workflows, agentic solutions, and AI enabled product features.
• Build and optimize LLMOps pipelines to support reliable deployment, evaluation, monitoring, and iteration of AI models.
• Collaborate with product, architecture, data, engineering, innovation, and marketing teams to identify AI opportunities with measurable business impact.
• Lead AI innovation within customer facing products, training platforms, digital experiences, and conversion workflows.
• Evaluate and implement approaches for prompt engineering, context management, embeddings, retrieval, and model optimization.
• Design AI systems with feedback loops, automated retraining, fine tuning, and lifecycle management where appropriate.
• Build data pipelines and preprocessing workflows that ensure data quality, security, and regulatory alignment.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through architecture reviews, code contributions, proof-of-concepts, and implementation guidance.
• Mentor AI engineers and partner with architects across application, product, CRM, and data domains.
• Help establish standards, documentation, and best practices for responsible AI development and deployment.
• Stay current on emerging AI trends, including impacts on digital marketing, Answer Engine Optimization, Generative Engine Optimization, and customer discovery behavior.

Requirements

• Eight or more years of progressive experience across software engineering, data analytics, machine learning, AI engineering, or related technology roles.
• One or more years of experience developing and implementing analytical, AI, or machine learning applications.
• Hands-on experience building and deploying LLM based solutions, generative AI applications, or AI powered product features.
• Strong understanding of machine learning, natural language processing, large language models, embeddings, retrieval patterns, and model evaluation.
• Experience with Python, SQL, Hugging Face, Snowflake, and modern ML or analytics tooling.
• Experience designing AI or ML solutions in Azure or comparable cloud environments.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, Docker, Kubernetes, MLflow, or similar MLOps and lifecycle management tools.
• Ability to translate ambiguous AI opportunities into practical, scalable engineering solutions.
• Strong product mindset with an interest in customer experience, product innovation, marketing enablement, and business impact.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers, influence technical direction, and guide best practices.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to present complex AI concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field preferred, or equivalent professional experience.

Technologies

• Python
• SQL
• Hugging Face
• Snowflake
• Azure
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• MLflow
• Azure AI services

Benefits

• Medical benefits
• Dental benefits
• Vision benefits
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Discretionary bonuses

Privacy notice

California residents may access Vaco by Highspring HR Notice at Collection for California Applicants and Employees here.

Virginia residents may access our state specific policies here.

Residents of all other states may access our policies here.

Canadian residents may access our policies in English here and in French here.

Residents of countries governed by GDPR may access our policies here.

Pay transparency notice

The pay transparency notice covers the following factors: the individual's skill sets, experience and training; licensure and certification requirements; office location and other geographic considerations; and other business and organizational needs.