Jr. AI Native Engineer

Valtech; Canada; Remote; CAD 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Valtech is seeking an AI Native Engineer in Canada to design, prototype and build AI-driven digital products. You will combine strong software fundamentals with modern AI capabilities, working across large language models, agentic systems, retrieval and cloud platforms to create impactful experiences.

You will design, prototype, and ship AI-native applications, collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to push the boundaries of AI-enabled software while maintaining a focus on security,

Qualifications

• 2–4 years of professional software engineering or application development experience.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: architecture, APIs, testing, debugging, version control, CI/CD.
• Hands-on experience building with generative AI and practical work with LLMs and model APIs.
• Familiarity with RAG, embeddings, semantic search or vector databases.
• Exposure to agents, function/tool calling or AI workflow orchestration.
• Experience connecting applications to APIs, data sources and cloud services.

Responsibilities

• Design, prototype and ship AI-native applications and experiences.
• Build applications using large language models, generative AI APIs and agentic architectures.
• Work with models and platforms such as Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini and open-source models.
• Build RAG and knowledge-retrieval solutions using embeddings, semantic search and vector databases.
• Experiment with AI agents, tool calling, structured outputs and multi-step workflows.
• Integrate AI solutions with APIs, databases and enterprise systems.
• Prototype quickly, test assumptions and turn experiments into scalable solutions.
• Develop approaches for evaluating and testing AI systems for quality, reliability and cost.
• Use AI-assisted engineering tools to advance design, development, testing and maintenance.
• Apply sound engineering practices around security, privacy, responsible AI, observability and human oversight.

Skills

Software engineering

LLMs & model APIs

Prompting & context management

RAG & embeddings

API integration

Prototyping & experimentation

Cloud platforms

Tools

Azure OpenAI

OpenAI

Anthropic Claude

Google Gemini

Open-source models

Job description

At Valtech, you’ll find an environment designed for continuous learning, meaningful impact, and professional growth. Whether you're pioneering new digital solutions, challenging conventional thinking or building the next generation of customer experiences, your work will help transform industries.

At Valtech, we are transforming how people experience the world through technology. Our culture is built around a mindset to make, learn and grow, bringing together technology, creativity and experience to solve meaningful business challenges. [valtech.com]

AI is rapidly changing what it means to build software, and we want people who are excited to be part of that change.

We are looking for an AI Native Engineer who has spent the last few years building strong software engineering foundations while actively exploring what's possible with AI. You are someone who didn't wait for AI to become part of your job description. You started experimenting, building, breaking things and learning.

You may have built an agent because you wanted to understand how agents actually work. You may have experimented with several models to understand their strengths and limitations. Maybe you've created a RAG application, automated part of your development workflow, contributed to an AI project, or simply spent countless hours turning new ideas into working prototypes.

That curiosity matters to us.

If you're an engineer who sees the emergence of AI as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how software is built, we'd like to meet you.

The role

As an AI Native Engineer, you'll work with multidisciplinary teams to design, prototype and build intelligent digital products and experiences.

You'll combine strong software engineering fundamentals with modern AI capabilities, working across large language models, agentic systems, retrieval, APIs, cloud platforms and emerging development tools.

Importantly, you'll help us discover what's next.

The AI landscape is moving quickly. We don't expect you to have all the answers. We expect you to be excited about finding them.

What you'll do

• Design, build and ship AI-native applications and experiences for real-world use cases.
• Build applications using large language models, generative AI APIs and agentic architectures.
• Work with models and platforms such as Azure OpenAI, OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini and open-source models.
• Build RAG and knowledge-retrieval solutions using embeddings, semantic search, vector databases and enterprise data.
• Experiment with AI agents, tool/function calling, structured outputs, orchestration and multi-step workflows.
• Integrate AI solutions with APIs, databases, existing platforms and enterprise systems.
• Rapidly prototype new ideas, test assumptions and turn promising experiments into scalable solutions.
• Build approaches for evaluating and testing AI systems, considering quality, accuracy, reliability, latency and cost.
• Use AI-assisted engineering tools to explore new ways of designing, developing, testing and maintaining software.
• Apply sound engineering practices around security, privacy, responsible AI, observability and human oversight.
• Share what you're learning and contribute to the evolving AI engineering practices across Valtech.

What we're looking for

• 2–4 years of professional software engineering or application development experience.
• Solid software engineering fundamentals, including application architecture, APIs, testing, debugging, version control and CI/CD.
• Hands-on experience building with generative AI, whether through client work, production applications, prototypes, internal innovation, hackathons, open-source contributions or substantial personal projects.
• Practical experience working with LLMs and model APIs, including prompting, context management, structured outputs and model selection.
• Familiarity with RAG, embeddings, semantic search or vector databases.
• Exposure to agents, function/tool calling or AI workflow orchestration.
• Experience connecting applications to APIs, data sources, databases and cloud services.
• An understanding that building a great AI demo and building a dependable AI product are two very different challenges.
• Most importantly, a demonstrated habit of exploring emerging technology and turning your curiosity into something tangible.

We’d love it if you've...

We don't expect you to check every box. You might have:

• Built your own AI application, agent, copilot or developer tool.
• Experimented with multiple models and learned where each performs well, and where it doesn't.
• Built RAG solutions using real-world or enterprise data.
• Explored agentic architectures, tool use or multi-agent workflows.
• Worked with frameworks such as Semantic Kernel, LangChain, LangGraph or LlamaIndex.
• Used technologies such as Azure AI Search, Elasticsearch, pgvector, Pinecone, Qdrant or Weaviate.
• Built applications on Azure, AWS or Google Cloud.
• Used tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code or Cursor as part of your engineering workflow.
• Created evaluations or testing approaches for AI outputs.
• Participated in AI hackathons, internal innovation initiatives or open-source communities.
• Seen a newly released AI capability and thought,“I need to try that.”

Specific frameworks will come and go. We're more interested in how you learn, what you've built and what you've discovered along the way.

You are

A builder.
You don't just read about AI. You build with it. You're comfortable moving from an idea to a prototype and learning through experimentation.

An explorer.
New models, multimodal experiences, agents, reasoning systems and AI development tools genuinely interest you. You're energized by a technology landscape where the playbook is still being written.

An engineer.
You care about what happens after the demo. Reliability, maintainability, architecture, security and testing matter to you.

A pragmatic thinker.
You understand that AI isn't the answer to every problem. You're interested in finding where it creates genuine value, not adding AI for AI's sake.

A learner.
You won't know every new model, framework or technique. That's okay. What matters is being able to say:“I haven't worked with that yet. Let's figure it out.”

What you can expect from us

You'll join an environment where experimentation and continuous learning are part of how we work. You'll collaborate with people across engineering, data, experience and strategy, and have opportunities to apply emerging AI capabilities to meaningful client and business challenges.

Valtech currently recruits across AI-focused roles alongside engineering, cloud, data and digital experience disciplines, reinforcing that AI is being embedded within the broader technology organization rather than existing solely as a standalone specialty.

You’ll have room to make, learn and grow, while helping shape what AI-native engineering means at Valtech.

Our goal at Valtech is to unlock a better way to experience the world - for everyone. We want to create an equitable, engaged and innovative workplace which gives people from all backgrounds the support they need to thrive and grow.

To do this, a crucial part of this work is having an understanding of who applies to work with us. To gather this insight, we’re sharing an optional voluntary form with you, where you can share your gender identity with us, alongside a "prefer not to say" option.