AI Engineer Sr

Socket.dev; Toronto; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Dayforce is seeking a highly skilled Senior AI Engineer to design, build, and scale enterprise AI solutions, applying Generative AI to real business problems and delivering production-ready systems from our Toronto office. You will help shape our AI platform, enabling AI-powered applications and intelligent agents that boost productivity and business outcomes.

The ideal candidate combines strong software fundamentals with hands-on expertise in modern AI frameworks and cloud-native development,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
• Six or more years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated experience building scalable, distributed applications.
• Two or more years of hands-on experience developing production AI or Generative AI applications.
• Strong programming skills in Python and experience with modern software engineering practices, including APIs, microservices, CI/CD, and cloud-native development.
• Hands-on experience with AI frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenAI SDK, Anthropic SDK, Semantic Kernel, or similar technologies.
• Experience designing and developing AI agents, multi-agent systems, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions, tool integrations, and AI orchestration workflows.
• Experience implementing AI observability, evaluation, monitoring, and diagnostics using tools such as LangSmith, Langfuse, OpenTelemetry, Arize Phoenix, or similar platforms.
• Strong understanding of AI security, privacy, governance, prompt injection mitigation, guardrails, and responsible AI development practices.
• Experience working with Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, along with containerization technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong problem-solving skills, excellent communication skills, and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, collaborative engineering environment.
• Demonstrated curiosity and passion for staying current with the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem and applying emerging technologies to solve complex engineering challenges.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy production-grade AI applications, intelligent agents, and agentic workflows using modern AI frameworks.
• Build and enhance reusable AI platform components, SDKs, libraries, and services that accelerate AI development across engineering teams.
• Develop scalable orchestration frameworks for AI agents, tool integration, retrieval pipelines, evaluation harnesses, and model interactions.
• Partner with Engineering, Architecture, and business services teams to identify, prototype, and deliver AI use cases that improve business processes and developer productivity.
• Manage and evolve enterprise AI platforms, including OpenAI Enterprise, Anthropic Enterprise, conversational AI platforms, and AI developer productivity tools, while driving platform strategy, governance, security, adoption, usage optimization, and engineering best practices.
• Build robust evaluation, testing, and monitoring capabilities to ensure AI solutions are reliable, observable, secure, and production-ready.
• Implement AI security, privacy, and governance controls, including prompt safety, data protection, guardrails, and responsible AI practices.
• Leverage AI-assisted software development throughout the software development lifecycle to improve engineering efficiency and code quality.
• Contribute to architecture decisions, establish engineering standards, mentor team members, and promote software engineering best practices for AI development.
• Continuously evaluate emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and industry trends to evolve the organization’s AI capabilities.

Skills

Python

APIs

CI/CD

Cloud-native development

LangGraph

LangChain

OpenAI SDK

Anthropic SDK

Semantic Kernel

Azure

AWS

Google Cloud

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Dayforce is a global human capital management (HCM) company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, with operations across North America, Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA), and the Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) region.

Our award-winning Cloud HCM platform offers a unified solution database and continuous calculation engine, driving efficiency, productivity and compliance for the global workforce.

Our brand promise - Makes Work Life Better - Reflects our commitment to employees, customers, partners and communities globally.

About the Opportunity

We are looking for a highly skilled, hands-on AI Engineer Sr. to design, build, and scale enterprise AI solutions that drive innovation across the organization. This role is ideal for an experienced software engineer who is passionate about applying Generative AI to solve real business problems and enjoys building production-ready systems.

You will play a key role in developing our AI platform, enabling AI-powered applications, and building intelligent agents that improve productivity and business outcomes. Working closely with Engineering and Architecture teams, you will help define best practices for AI development while ensuring solutions are secure, observable, scalable, and reusable.

The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering fundamentals with expertise in modern AI frameworks, agentic architectures, and cloud-native development, along with a passion for building AI-powered capabilities that create lasting business value and leveraging AI to improve software development and engineering productivity.

What You'll Get to Do

• Design, develop, and deploy production-grade AI applications, intelligent agents, and agentic workflows using modern AI frameworks.
• Build and enhance reusable AI platform components, SDKs, libraries, and services that accelerate AI development across engineering teams.
• Develop scalable orchestration frameworks for AI agents, tool integration, retrieval pipelines, evaluation harnesses, and model interactions.
• Partner with Engineering, Architecture, and business services teams to identify, prototype, and deliver AI use cases that improve business processes and developer productivity.
• Manage and evolve enterprise AI platforms, including OpenAI Enterprise, Anthropic Enterprise, conversational AI platforms, and AI developer productivity tools, while driving platform strategy, governance, security, adoption, usage optimization, and engineering best practices.
• Build robust evaluation, testing, and monitoring capabilities to ensure AI solutions are reliable, observable, secure, and production-ready.
• Implement AI security, privacy, and governance controls, including prompt safety, data protection, guardrails, and responsible AI practices.
• Leverage AI‑assisted software development throughout the software development lifecycle to improve engineering efficiency and code quality.
• Contribute to architecture decisions, establish engineering standards, mentor team members, and promote software engineering best practices for AI development.
• Continuously evaluate emerging AI technologies, frameworks, and industry trends to evolve the organization’s AI capabilities.

Skills and Experience We Value

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
• Six or more years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated experience building scalable, distributed applications.
• Two or more years of hands‑on experience developing production AI or Generative AI applications.
• Strong programming skills in Python and experience with modern software engineering practices, including APIs, microservices, CI/CD, and cloud‑native development.
• Hands‑on experience with AI frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenAI SDK, Anthropic SDK, Semantic Kernel, or similar technologies.
• Experience designing and developing AI agents, multi‑agent systems, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) solutions, tool integrations, and AI orchestration workflows.
• Experience implementing AI observability, evaluation, monitoring, and diagnostics using tools such as LangSmith, Langfuse, OpenTelemetry, Arize Phoenix, or similar platforms.
• Strong understanding of AI security, privacy, governance, prompt injection mitigation, guardrails, and responsible AI development practices.
• Experience working with Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud, along with containerization technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong problem‑solving skills, excellent communication skills, and the ability to thrive in a fast‑paced, collaborative engineering environment.
• Demonstrated curiosity and passion for staying current with the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem and applying emerging technologies to solve complex engineering challenges.

What Would Make You Stand Out

• Strong product intuition and a track record of building tools that developers love.
• Direct experience integrating AI capabilities into a live developer platform, such as IDEs, code assistants, or copilots.
• Experience working with cloud‑native platforms such as Replit, Vercel, or similar technologies.
• Contributions to open‑source AI tooling or platforms.
• Experience optimizing large language models (LLMs) for low‑latency inference in browser or edge environments.
• Passion for democratizing AI and enabling builders of all skill levels to succeed.

What's in it for you

Dayforce is fueled by the diversity of our talented employees. We are an equal opportunity employer and consider and embrace ALL individuals and what makes them unique. We believe our employees should be happy and healthy, with peace of mind and a sense of fulfillment.

Dayforce encourages personal and professional growth. We offer excellent time away from work programs, comprehensive wellness initiatives and recognition through competitive pay and benefits.

With a commitment to community impact, including volunteer days and our charity, Dayforce Cares we provide opportunities for you to thrive both in your career and personal life. Our focus is not just on your job but on supporting you to be the best version of yourself.

This job posting is for an existing vacancy

Artificial intelligence may be used in the screening, assessment, or selection of applicants for this position.

About the Salary Ranges

Please note that the salary range mentioned in this job description should serve simply as a guide. The final compensation offered may vary based on a variety of factors, including bonuses and/or incentives, or a candidate's experience, skills, budget and location. Our company is committed to providing a fair, equitable, and competitive package that reflects the value an individual brings to the organization.

Proficiency in English is required for this position as this role will regularly interact with English-speaking stakeholders, co-workers, managers and/or clients across the world. Further, our back office support teams, including but not limited to Human Resources, are primarily English speaking. Employees need to be able to communicate with these departments in English to appropriately administer their business relationship. Due to the significant high volume of interactions with these English-speaking co-workers, managers, stakeholders and/or clients, which is inherent to this position, it is not possible to reorganize the company's activities to avoid this requirement.