Senior AI Solutions Engineer
About The Position
ESS Companies is a heavy civil construction holding company with six operating subsidiaries. We build roads, bridges, and infrastructure — and increasingly, we build the software and AI systems that make that work faster, safer, and more profitable. AI and automation are changing how work gets done, and we intend to be deliberate about it rather than swept along by it. This role owns that: finding where AI genuinely helps the business and then making it happen. It is not a research role and it is not a slideware role. It's a builder's role — you'll investigate problems, design solutions, and ship them, sometimes as code, sometimes as a configured tool, sometimes as a vendor you talked us into buying. You'll be early. You will not be employee #40 on an established AI team — you'll be the start of one. As the work matures and the function grows, this role has a clear path to leading the team it seeds. You'd work directly with our EVP of Technology & Innovation to shape what that team becomes and to help build it out. We want someone who can be a strong individual contributor now and grow into that leadership as the function scales — not someone who needs a team underneath them to be effective on day one. If "define the playbook as you go" sounds like too much ambiguity, this isn't the job. If it sounds like the fun part, keep reading.
Requirements
- Production code development (Python and SQL minimum).
- Experience deploying and maintaining code.
- Cloud platform experience (GCP preferred, strong AWS/Azure acceptable).
- Fluency with modern AI tooling: LLM APIs, prompt design, retrieval/RAG patterns, agent frameworks, AI-assisted development (Claude Code, Copilot, or equivalent).
- Understanding of AI tool reliability and limitations.
- Data proficiency: SQL, understanding of warehouses and ELT, ability to model and query business data.
- Ability to translate between technical and business stakeholders (project managers, CFOs).
- Good judgment regarding build vs. buy decisions.
- Ability to operate with minimal direction.
- Capability to scope vague business problems and deliver working solutions.
Nice To Haves
- Construction, engineering, or other operations-heavy industry experience.
- Experience integrating with enterprise systems like ERP (Viewpoint Vista or similar) and HCM platforms (Workday).
- dbt, BigQuery, and modern data stack experience.
- Experience standing up internal-facing applications with enterprise authentication (Entra ID / OIDC).
- Track record of driving adoption of new tools among non-technical users.
Responsibilities
- Build agents, projects, and workflows on top of existing AI tools (Microsoft Copilot, Claude, ChatGPT).
- Write prompts and guardrails to ensure reliability of AI tools.
- Help ~3,000 professional staff adopt AI tools.
- Connect AI tools to the enterprise data warehouse, ERP, and cloud file-sharing platforms via APIs and connectors.
- Expose AI-driven data insights as agents and projects accessible to non-technical users.
- Evaluate vendor AI products and conduct build-vs-buy analyses.
- Drive the implementation of selected commercial AI solutions across subsidiaries.
- Build custom automation and applications when suitable commercial solutions are not available.
- Develop AI-powered features within custom applications (e.g., extraction, classification, agents).
- Utilize AI-assisted development tools for faster development.
- Implement agentic development workflows.
Benefits
- Clear path to leading the AI team.
- Opportunity to shape the AI function and team.
- Work directly with EVP of Technology & Innovation.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
