Junior AI & Automation Engineer

K Group Companies•Grand Rapids, MI

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Junior AI & Automation Engineer is a hands-on builder role within K Group’s AI and Automation practice. This role focuses on the design, construction, and iteration of automation workflows, AI-assisted integrations, and internal tooling that the practice delivers to clients and deploys internally. This is not a help-desk role. It’s not a ticket queue. It’s a make-things-work role for someone who gets excited about connecting systems that weren’t designed to talk to each other — and figures out what’s possible when they do. The ideal candidate thrives on turning ambiguous problems into working, practical systems and takes ownership of what they build.

Requirements

Has built something for the joy of building it — a homelab, a personal automation, a self-hosted stack, a side project. Show us something.
Comfortable working with APIs, webhooks, and JSON without needing a tutorial for every call.
Familiar with Linux environments and capable of reading documentation when there’s no walkthrough available.
Communicates clearly — can explain what something does and why it was built that way.
Doesn’t need a strict playbook. Figures things out.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with n8n, Make (Integromat), Zapier, or similar automation platforms.
Familiarity with AI/LLM tooling — OpenAI API, Ollama, Anthropic, LangChain, or similar.
Python or JavaScript scripting at a working level (not a developer, but comfortable in code).
Background in IT, MSP, sysadmin, or network environments.
Docker or self-hosted deployment experience.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain automation workflows using n8n, APIs, and webhook-based integrations across business platforms.
Develop AI-assisted pipelines including document processing, classification, notification routing, and data transformation workflows.
Connect disparate systems — CRMs, ticketing platforms, ERPs, communication tools — that weren’t designed to work together.
Build and iterate on internal tools that reduce manual effort and create measurable operational efficiencies for K Group and its clients.
Assist with delivery execution on AI/automation client engagements under the direction of practice leadership.
Participate in client discovery sessions as a technical contributor, supporting needs assessment and solution scoping.
Translate defined business requirements into working systems and document outcomes clearly for client and internal stakeholders.
Contribute to reusable delivery frameworks, templates, and runbooks that allow the practice to scale across multiple client engagements.
Build lightweight dashboards and front-end tools that surface automation outputs to non-technical users.
Document what you build — workflows, integration maps, configuration notes — so solutions are maintainable and transferable.
Support internal AI adoption by contributing to training materials and usage playbooks as the practice grows.