Principal AI Engineer/ AI Applied Scientist

FICO

5d•$171,500 - $269,500•Remote

About The Position

As a Principal Applied AI Engineer on FICO’s Generative AI team, you will design novel language-model applications across the FICO platform, including fraud investigation, decision automation, and process flow automation. You will architect robust, scalable, and well-governed AI systems that perform reliably at enterprise scale, applying AI and machine-learning expertise to deliver next-generation platform capabilities. The role combines research and integration of emerging AI techniques with hands-on development of production-quality machine-learning systems. It includes creating and evaluating LLM and Retrieval-Augmented Generation solutions, validating model performance, and designing scalable architectures and monitoring systems for FICO’s analytics and decisioning products.

Requirements

Extensive industry experience in software, machine-learning, or data engineering, including managing complex, large-scale projects and making strategic technical decisions.
In-depth knowledge and experience in fine-tuning, model adaptation, and customization.
Solid foundation in machine-learning evaluation and testing methodologies, including developing custom evaluation frameworks.
Extensive experience with RAG architectures and familiarity with vector databases.
Strong hands-on coding skills in Python, Go, Java, or similar languages.
Experience with PyTorch, JAX, or similar deep-learning frameworks.
Knowledge of backtesting methodologies for validating model predictions.
Experience with A/B testing frameworks.
Expertise in model monitoring, drift detection, and governance.
Strong prompt-engineering skills, including chain-of-thought prompting techniques.
Familiarity with compliance and regulatory technology, particularly in AI-driven decisioning environments.
Strong software-engineering fundamentals, including production-quality coding and scalable architecture design.
Ability to mentor teams and collaborate across departments.
Ability to adapt and drive impact in fast-paced, high-growth, high-stakes environments.
Bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD degree in computer science or a related field, with a focus in machine learning.

Nice To Haves

Proven expertise in modern Large Language Models (LLMs) and their applications.
Publications, patents, or open-source contributions demonstrating thought leadership and technical expertise in AI and machine learning.

Responsibilities

Design and implement LLM-powered solutions for decision automation, fraud investigation, and process automation within FICO’s platform.
Develop prompting strategies and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures for high-stakes applications.
Apply fine-tuning, in-context learning, and custom evaluation frameworks to optimize AI model performance.
Build model evaluation and governance systems to support compliance and reliability.
Design and execute backtesting methodologies to validate model predictions and performance.
Implement A/B testing frameworks to evaluate the impact of AI interventions on system performance.
Monitor model performance and detect drift to maintain accuracy and relevance.
Research and integrate current AI techniques, and evaluate emerging models, architectures, and training approaches.
Develop custom RAG implementations to improve information retrieval in decision processes.
Write production-quality code for scalable, reliable, and secure machine-learning systems.
Design scalable architectures for FICO’s analytics and decisioning solutions.
Implement monitoring techniques and system reliability checks.