Skip to content

Senior Engineer, AI Engineering (R5459)

United States
Full Time On-site

The Senior Engineer, AI Engineering is a hands-on individual contributor responsible for building and operating AI-enabled solutions, reusable components, integrations, automations, and measurement capabilities that accelerate enterprise AI adoption. Reporting into the AI Engineering organization, this role works closely with the Staff Engineer, AI Platform & Architecture and the Director, AI Engineering to convert high-friction workflows into secure, reliable, measurable AI capabilities. The Senior Engineer delivers production-quality agents, prompts, connectors, dashboards, and workflow automations while following established architecture, governance, and cost-control standards. Success is defined by shipped capabilities that improve employee productivity, reusable components that reduce duplicate work, reliable telemetry that demonstrates impact, and strong collaboration with business and technology partners.

What you'll do:

    AI Solution Delivery & Productivity Enablement
  • Build AI-assisted tools, workflow automations, agents, prompts, and integrations that reduce manual effort and improve individual and team productivity.
  • Partner with business stakeholders to understand high-friction workflows, translate them into technical requirements, and deliver fit-for-purpose AI solutions.
  • Implement AI-augmented collaboration patterns such as meeting intelligence, document generation, contextual knowledge retrieval, task automation, and internal assistant workflows.
  • Develop and maintain internal enablement assets including prompt templates, agent examples, skill templates, playbooks, and usage guidance.
  • Collect user feedback and operational telemetry to improve adoption, usability, reliability, and measured impact.
  • Reusable Components & Integrations
  • Build and maintain reusable AI components including connectors, integration adapters, prompt modules, data pipelines, skill templates, and service wrappers.
  • Contribute to shared component libraries using established quality, documentation, versioning, testing, and deprecation practices.
  • Integrate AI capabilities with enterprise systems, collaboration tools, knowledge repositories, data platforms, and workflow automation platforms.
  • Create developer-facing documentation, examples, and onboarding material that help other teams adopt shared AI components safely and efficiently.
  • Identify repeatable patterns from project work and convert them into reusable assets for broader enterprise use.
  • Responsible AI Controls & Operations
  • Implement engineering controls for data handling, access management, prompt safety, output validation, audit logging, and secure integration patterns.
  • Follow enterprise AI architecture and governance standards while escalating gaps, risks, or implementation challenges to technical leads.
  • Build or maintain dashboards for AI usage, adoption, policy adherence, cost visibility, error patterns, and operational health.
  • Support model, prompt, and agent lifecycle activities such as evaluation, version tracking, testing, rollout, monitoring, and rollback.
  • Participate in security, privacy, and governance reviews by providing implementation details, evidence, and remediation support.
  • Cost, ROI & Cross-Functional Execution
  • Instrument AI solutions to capture usage, performance, cost, quality, and productivity metrics.
  • Support cost optimization work through usage analysis, model efficiency improvements, license rationalization inputs, and service tuning.
  • Help connect AI solution usage to measurable outcomes such as time savings, error reduction, throughput improvement, and capacity creation.
  • Collaborate with Engineering, IT, Security, Legal, Data, Finance, and business unit teams to deliver reliable AI capabilities in a matrixed environment.
  • Contribute to AI communities of practice by sharing lessons learned, reusable patterns, demos, and implementation guidance.

Required qualifications:

  • Progressive experience building enterprise software, automation, data, AI, or digital workplace solutions.
  • Hands-on experience integrating large language models, generative AI tools, APIs, RAG systems, agents, prompt workflows, or AI-assisted automation into production or enterprise environments.
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals including API design, testing, observability, documentation, secure coding practices, and maintainable implementation patterns.
  • Experience building integrations with enterprise systems, collaboration platforms, knowledge repositories, data platforms, or workflow automation tools.
  • Working knowledge of AI governance concepts such as access controls, data classification, audit logging, prompt safety, output validation, and model/prompt versioning.
  • Ability to convert ambiguous business workflows into practical technical solutions in partnership with stakeholders.
  • Experience instrumenting systems with telemetry, logging, dashboards, usage metrics, or cost/performance monitoring.
  • Clear communication skills and a collaborative style suitable for working across business, engineering, security, legal, and data teams.

Preferred qualifications:

  • Experience in regulated, security-sensitive, defense-adjacent, or data-governed environments.
  • Familiarity with enterprise AI tooling ecosystems including copilot platforms, workflow automation suites, RAG platforms, vector databases, and enterprise search.
  • Experience with MLOps, model evaluation, AI observability, prompt/agent testing, or production monitoring.
  • Hands-on experience with data platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, lakehouse architectures, or equivalent data infrastructure.
  • Experience developing usage dashboards, cost reporting, showback inputs, or ROI measurement for shared technology services.
  • Experience contributing to reusable component libraries, internal developer platforms, templates, or enablement playbooks.
  • Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
Full-time regular employee offer package:
Pay within range listed + Bonus + Benefits + Equity
Temporary employee offer package:
Pay within range listed above + temporary benefits package (applicable after 60 days of employment)
Salary compensation is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, licenses and certifications, and specific work location. All offers are contingent on a cleared background and possible reference check. Military fellows and part-time employees are not eligible for benefits. Please speak to your talent acquisition representative for more information.
Shield AI is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know. 

About Shield AI

Shield AI

Shield AI is a defense technology company building autonomous AI systems for aircraft, drones, and intelligent mission software used in complex military environments. Founded in 2015, the company is best known for developing Hivemind, an AI pilot system that enables aircraft and drones to operate autonomously in contested and GPS-denied environments, supporting U.S. and allied defense missions.

For job seekers, Shield AI offers opportunities across advanced fields including artificial intelligence, robotics, software engineering, autonomy systems, aerospace engineering, embedded systems, and mission operations. The company is especially attractive to engineers, AI researchers, and defense professionals who want to work on real-world autonomous systems that are actively being deployed in operational military scenarios.

Unlike traditional defense contractors, Shield AI operates with a startup-style engineering culture focused on rapid experimentation, real-world testing, and fast deployment of autonomous capabilities. Employees work on tightly integrated AI and robotics systems that combine perception, decision-making, and control, enabling platforms to operate without direct human input in highly complex environments.

As modern warfare increasingly shifts toward autonomous systems, distributed sensing, and AI-enabled decision-making, Shield AI continues to grow as one of the most prominent companies in next-generation defense technology. For professionals seeking to build cutting-edge autonomy systems with direct mission impact, Shield AI stands out as a leading employer in the defense innovation ecosystem.

Go to company profile