Senior Applied AI Engineer — Backend & AI Systems

Forward Financing; Canada; Remote; CAD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Forward Financing is seeking a Staff Software Engineer - Applied AI to architect and build AI-powered backend systems that scale. You will design services and APIs that integrate OpenAI, Claude, and Hugging Face models, and you will own end-to-end delivery from concept to production in a fast-paced innovation lab.

You will collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and frontend engineers, apply cloud and containerization, and craft reliable data pipelines.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical discipline.
• Proven backend software engineering experience with strong programming skills (Python preferred).
• Experience designing scalable backend systems, APIs, and distributed services.
• Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure, containers, and deployment pipelines.
• Familiarity with AI ecosystem components including foundational model providers and AI APIs.
• Excellent communication skills with technical and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Translate high-level business problems into functional AI solutions and end-to-end implementations.
• Design, build, and maintain backend services and APIs that deploy and integrate AI-powered features with foundational models.
• Create scalable, reliable backend architecture supporting AI workflows, data processing pipelines.
• Integrate AI services into complex stacks, ensuring interoperability with microservices, AWS, and Snowflake.
• Develop experimentation frameworks to support rapid test-and-learn cycles for AI features.
• Collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and frontend engineers to translate needs into solutions.
• Stay updated on AI tools and evaluate new capabilities for adoption.
• Document backend designs, APIs, workflows, and integration patterns for the team.
• Contribute to responsible AI practices and data privacy considerations in implementations.

Skills

Backend engineering

Python

Distributed systems

APIs

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in CS/Engineering

Tools

OpenAI

Claude

Hugging Face

Job description

Forward Financing is seeking a Staff Software Engineer - Applied AI to architect and build AI-powered backend systems that scale. You will design services and APIs that integrate OpenAI, Claude, and Hugging Face models, and you will own end-to-end delivery from concept to production in a fast-paced innovation lab.

You will collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and frontend engineers, apply cloud and containerization, and craft reliable data pipelines.