AI Engineer

TL Consulting Group; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Certification budget

Partner engagement

Engineering ladder

Competitive salary

Job summary

TL Consulting Group in Sydney seeks an AI Engineer to build and operate AI-powered applications for client engagements, focusing on Azure AI Foundry, retrieval-augmented generation, and AI-assisted engineering practice. This hands-on role requires delivering production-ready solutions across multiple technology stacks and client environments.

The ideal candidate has practical AI/ML deployment experience, strong Python, and full-stack capability (C# or TypeScript), plus a track record in modern

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering/IT or related field required.
• Equivalent demonstrable experience will be considered.
• Azure AI certifications are welcome but not required.

Responsibilities

• Deploy and configure models on Azure AI Foundry and similar platforms.
• Integrate models into applications with inference clients and cost metrics.
• Build RAG pipelines with chunking, embeddings, vector search and re-ranking.
• Develop agentic workflows across runtime, GitHub Actions and Copilot Studio.
• Implement MCP servers and tool integration patterns where applicable.
• Modernise existing applications with AI-assisted delivery.
• Write specifications before implementation and drive coding accordingly.
• Instrument token usage, latency and cost for governance.

Skills

Python programming

Full-stack dev

Terraform

CI/CD

GitHub Actions

Azure AI Foundry

RAG pipelines

Agentic workflows

Prompt engineering

Guardrails & governance

Documentation

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Engineering/IT/Math

Equivalent demonstrable experience

Azure AI certifications welcome

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Logic Apps

API Management

Job description

At TL Consulting, we simplify modern complexity with advanced, sustainable engineering. As a proudly Australian-owned consultancy with over 15 years of experience, we empower businesses to innovate and achieve measurable outcomes through scalable, cloud-native solutions. Our 50+ consultants operate across key sectors including banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), government, retail, education and entertainment. This cross-industry expertise allows us to deliver customer-centric solutions that combine deep technical capability with a clear understanding of each client's strategic vision. Our approach leverages proven, scalable blueprints tailored to your business direction - enabling accelerated outcomes, maximised ROI, and sustainable long-term adoption.

We maintain strategic partnerships with organisations that share our vision for a cloud-native future. Through our collaborations with Microsoft, GitHub and Databricks, we ensure our capabilities stay aligned with evolving best practices. These partnerships also provide access to innovation programmes, co-funding opportunities and dedicated support - helping us accelerate time-to-value for our clients.

About the role

The AI Engineer builds and operates AI-powered applications and agentic systems for TL's clients, with a focus on Azure AI Foundry, retrieval-augmented generation, and AI-assisted engineering practice. This is a hands‑on delivery role. You build what the solution design calls for and prove it works: deploying and integrating models, building retrieval and agent components, modernising existing applications and writing the evaluations that demonstrate output is fit to put in front of users. The ideal candidate is a capable software engineer with production AI experience who moves between client environments and technology stacks, and who is as interested in whether a solution works as in building it.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

AI Application & Agentic Engineering

• Deploy and configure models on Azure AI Foundry and equivalent platforms, and build the Terraform and CI/CD that provisions them.
• Integrate models into applications: inference clients, retry and timeout behaviour, structured output, streaming, and token and cost instrumentation.
• Build retrieval‑augmented generation pipelines covering chunking, embeddings, vector and hybrid search, and re‑ranking, and diagnose retrieval failures.
• Build agentic workflows across application runtime, GitHub Actions and Copilot Studio, including recognising when a deterministic workflow is the better answer.
• Implement Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and tool integration patterns where applicable.

Application Modernisation & AI‑assisted Delivery

• Modernise existing applications full-stack, using AI‑assisted methods to accelerate delivery rather than only adding AI features.
• Work specification‑first: write and review the specification before implementation, and use it to drive coding agents.
• Apply GitHub Copilot, Claude Code and similar tooling within an agreed engineering workflow.

Evaluation & Quality

• Build evaluation harnesses: golden datasets, regression suites, automated output comparison, and LLM‑as‑judge where appropriate.
• Run shadow evaluations comparing a new model or platform against an incumbent, and report what the data shows.
• Tune guardrails and content filters against real workload content and measure the residual false‑positive rate.

Cost, Governance & Handover

• Instrument token usage, latency and cost, and attribute spend so it traces to a team or product.
• Work within the engagement's model and prompt governance: versioning, approval, and evaluation thresholds that gate a release.
• Document solutions so the client's team can operate them after handover, and contribute to internal knowledge sharing.

SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Engineering, Mathematics or a related quantitative discipline.
• Equivalent demonstrable experience will be considered in place of a formal qualification. We assess on what you have built and shipped.
• Relevant certification is welcome but not required, for example Microsoft Azure AI Engineer Associate or Azure Developer Associate.

Experience

• 2 to 4 years in software or platform engineering, including at least one AI or ML system taken to production and supported afterwards.
• Practical retrieval‑augmented generation experience, including the failure modes.
• Experience evaluating model output with a method more rigorous than reviewing a sample of responses.
• Exposure to client‑facing or cross‑team delivery.

Technical Skills

AI & LLM Engineering

• Hands‑on with Azure AI Foundry, and able to reason about AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI and self‑hosted alternatives
• Prompt engineering, structured output and evaluation techniques
• Retrieval‑augmented generation and agentic workflows
• Awareness of open‑weight model serving and fine‑tuning approaches such as LoRA

Azure & Cloud

• Azure AI Foundry and Azure AI services
• Awareness of Azure Data Factory, Logic Apps and API Management
• Cloud‑native application patterns

Engineering & DevOps

• Strong programming capability in Python; full‑stack capability across one of C#, TypeScript or equivalent
• Terraform and CI/CD with GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps
• GitHub Copilot and AI‑assisted development practice
• Spec‑driven development

Cost & Governance

• Awareness of model costing and usage‑based billing
• Understanding of content filtering, guardrails and responsible AI basics

Soft Skills

• Excellent verbal and written communication. Much of the value produced on an engagement is a document someone else acts on.
• Ability to explain complex technical concepts to non‑technical stakeholders.
• A team player who can work effectively with diverse delivery teams to ensure a positive client experience.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and work independently in a dynamic environment.
• Willingness to learn continuously. The tooling in this field turns over roughly every six months and we expect people to form a view by building, not by reading.
• Commitment to sharing knowledge: writing up learnings, running internal sessions, and transferring capability to client teams.

WHY JOIN US

• Be part of a consultancy that values innovation, growth and professional development.
• Work with diverse, top‑tier clients across multiple industries, delivering impactful solutions.
• Dedicated time and budget for certification, conferences and deep work on new technology.
• Direct engagement with Microsoft and other partners, including co‑sell and reference architecture work.
• A clear engineering ladder with levels defined by scope and judgement rather than tenure.
• Competitive salary and benefits package.

This is a Sydney based, permanent opportunity and will be hybrid in nature. No agencies please. Candidates must have valid visa with full work rights in Australia. Visas will not be transferred or sponsored.

TL Consulting Group understands the importance of fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We are committed to ensuring that everyone, no matter their gender, identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, disability or age, has equal