Senior AI Engineer (Databricks)

Abacus Insights

2d•Remote

About The Position

As a Senior AI Engineer, you will help architect, build and implement our AI platforms, working closely with data quality engineers, data/software engineers, platform engineers, DevOps, product owners and business. You provide technical leadership for multiple, diverse, and geographically distributed teams. You will coach and guide teams to enable future success. Also be a partner with engineering managers, directors and VP on strategic initiatives and future business growth opportunities especially around AI and ensuring the engineering organization can scale to meet the need. As a member of the engineering team, you are responsible for coaching, mentoring, and driving change to enable us to deliver and innovate in an agile environment.

Requirements

7-10 years of overall experience in software engineering or related discipline.
3-5 years of ML/AI engineering experience in high-velocity, high-growth companies. Alternatively, a strong background in relevant ML/AI research in academia will be considered as contributing qualification
2+ years of experience with Databricks, Mosaic AI Gateway and associated technologies in Databricks stack related to Data and AI engineering
Strong track record of working with language modeling technologies and GenAI. This could include the following: Developing generative and embedding techniques, modern model architectures, fine tuning / pre-training datasets, evaluation benchmarks, Agents and Agentic workflows (e.g. orchestration, workflow management, observability, debugging), RAG, SQL Agents, MCP, etc.
Proficiency in Python, TensorFlow/PyTorch, and scalable ML/AI architecture
Ability to drive end-to-end model and system development, from research and prototyping to deployment and monitoring
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a passion for improving AI-driven user experiences
Strong coding and software engineering skills, and familiarity with software engineering principles around testing, code reviews and deployment
Experience and good understanding of designing scalable, distributed systems for running small to medium scale data processing applications and services (10s – 100s of TBs of data)
Possesses a level of breadth and depth of software and AI development experience that allows for influence and competence in technical discussions with internal and external stakeholders
Solid understanding of roles adjacent to the software development (product management, project management, client delivery, operations etc.). Ability to adapt to these roles as defined at Abacus and work with others in these roles
Proven record of success of driving and/or leading engineering teams/projects towards developing production grade systems supporting customers

Nice To Haves

Snowflake, FHIR, Healthcare Data exposure

Responsibilities

Help shape the direction of our applied AI areas and intelligence features in our products.
Drive the deployment of state-of-the-art AI models and systems that directly impacts on the capabilities and performance of Abacus’s products and services (e.g., Abacus Agents, MCP, SQL and RAG agents and tools, etc.)
Develop novel data collection, fine-tuning, and LLM technologies that achieve optimal performance on specific tasks and domains
Design and implement ML/AI pipelines for data preprocessing, feature engineering, model training, hyperparameter tuning, and model evaluation, enabling rapid experimentation, iteration and self-healing
Work closely with cross-functional teams, including AI engineers, data engineers, and product teams, to deliver impactful AI solutions that enhance user productivity and satisfaction
Build scalable, reusable backend systems to support GenAI products across the company. Develop robust logging, telemetry, and evaluation harnesses to ensure reliable model and GenAI system performance
Skillful at driving critical projects (e.g. AI and data engineering Innovation, Development Productivity and Benchmarking)
Meaningful experience in the world of Data and AI
Capable of credible customer interactions
Mentoring development team members to ensure delivered solutions adhere to the software architecture strategy, coding standards, and established organizational policies and procedures
Participating in software architectural discussions, influencing decisions, and collaborating with peers to maintain consistency across the organization
Identifying people and process improvement strategies for the Agile/Scrum team(s), especially for AI projects/teams where innovation and iteration are critical
Communicate organizational updates to ensure teams adhere to the established policies and procedures
Ensure projects are completed on time and according to our quality standards
Facilitates communication upward around architecture, design, and implementation objectives
Proven experience in leading software development teams or projects
Excellent knowledge of software development design, QA and test automation, and experience with agile development methodologies
Demonstrated knowledge of Cloud Architecture, AI Architecture, Agents/Agentic systems, Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) compute frameworks for Data+AI platforms, Security, and MCP/API based services
Good understanding of Incident Management, Configuration Management, Operational efficiency and Customer Escalation Management preferred. Can manage the balance of deliveries on our roadmap commitments while dealing with interruptions and client escalations
Good experience with open source
Coach and mentor software and AI developers, develop staff skills, provide continuous feedback
Has relentlessly high standards (is never satisfied with the status quo)
Responsible for protecting, securing, and proper handling of all confidential data held by Abacus to ensure against unauthorized access, improper transmission, and/or unapproved disclosure of information that could result in harm to Abacus or our clients.