Applied AI Engineer/Architect
West MonroeBase Salary
$225k - $304k/yr
Responsibilities
- Lead the architecture and delivery of enterprise AI solutions, including model selection, retrieval strategies, workflow orchestration, evaluation, observability, guardrails, and human oversight.
- Design and implement AI-enabled applications using LLMs, agents, retrieval-augmented generation, tool integrations, and secure production deployment patterns.
- Define semantic models, ontologies, business objects, metadata strategies, permissions, and data contracts for enterprise AI workflows.
- Advise clients on AI strategy, technical feasibility, data readiness, governance, responsible AI practices, and implementation roadmaps.
- Partner with application, data, and cloud engineering teams to integrate AI capabilities into production systems, data platforms, security architectures, and operational workflows.
- Establish AI evaluation methodologies using benchmark datasets, regression testing, red-team scenarios, quality metrics, and release criteria.
- Serve as a technical advisor during business pursuits and support proposals, client presentations, and executive discussions.
- Develop reusable AI frameworks, accelerators, evaluation methodologies, and reference architectures while mentoring engineers and architects.
- Contribute to thought leadership, internal capability building, and innovation initiatives for the Applied AI practice.
Requirements
- 7+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, machine learning, applied AI, or technical architecture, including recent hands-on AI engineering experience.
- Proven experience building production AI solutions using LLMs, AI agents, RAG, prompt engineering, AI evaluation frameworks, observability, MLOps, or machine learning platforms.
- Strong Python development skills and proficiency in at least one additional enterprise technology stack such as TypeScript, Java, C#, or modern data engineering frameworks.
- Experience with one or more AI ecosystems including Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Databricks, Snowflake, Microsoft Fabric, or comparable platforms.
- Strong understanding of cloud architecture, APIs, identity and access management, security, data engineering, application integration, and production deployment practices.
- Knowledge of semantic modeling, ontology design, knowledge representation, data governance, and enterprise AI architecture.
- Ability to communicate technical concepts, tradeoffs, and implementation risks to executive stakeholders, business leaders, architects, and engineering teams.
- Experience using AI tools such as ChatGPT in daily workflows, with the critical judgment to assess accuracy, mitigate bias, and ensure quality.
- Ability to travel 25% to 50%.
- Ability to work permanently in the United States without sponsorship.
- Commitment to inclusion and diversity and openness to new ideas and perspectives.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance coverage for employees and families.
- 401k plan enrollment and eligibility to purchase shares through the employee stock ownership program.
- Annual bonus eligibility.
- Unlimited flexible time off and ten paid holidays annually.
- Ten weeks of paid parental leave available upon hire.
- Work is associated with West Monroe office locations, with salary varying by geography; the role requires 25% to 50% travel.
Tech Stack
Categories
About West Monroe
West Monroe is a global business and technology consulting firm passionate about creating value for our clients. We co-create solutions that accelerate results now and prepare industries to tackle what’s next. We’re excited by the possibilities that technology creates. We work with our clients to deliver on the possible, building on their goals, generating fresh insights and creating inspiring outcomes. We excel at the intersection of industry, strategy, people and technology—always driving rapid impact. Our all-in approach comes from our unique employee ownership structure. Our clients’ success is our success. From the beginning, our growth has come from putting people at the center. Fortune and USA Today consistently celebrate West Monroe as a top workplace, and we’re recognized as a leading consultancy by Forbes and Forrester. Share our passion at westmonroe.com.