Staff AI Engineer

Safe Software; Surrey; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Safe Software is seeking a Staff AI Engineer to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems across the organization. This hands‑on role covers the full AI lifecycle from data prep to evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement, spanning generative AI, retrieval, and agentic workflows.

You’ll architect agentic systems, secure and govern AI deployments, and drive reusable architectures while mentoring teams and aligning with enterprise standards.

Qualifications

• 8+ years across software engineering and AI/ML, including 3+ years building and operating AI/ML systems in production at scale.
• Strong software engineering skills, particularly in Python or comparable backend technologies.
• Experience developing, adapting, fine‑tuning, evaluating, deploying, and monitoring AI or machine learning models.
• Applied AI experience in enterprise use cases such as chatbots, workflow automation, RAG, intelligent document processing, recommendation systems, or decision support.
• Strong understanding of generative AI, LLMs, retrieval systems, agent‑based architectures, and applied machine learning.
• Experience with production data pipelines, APIs, model‑serving infrastructure, testing, security, reliability, and observability.
• Ability to explain complex technical decisions and tradeoffs to engineering teams and business stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, evaluate, deploy, and operate end-to-end AI/ML systems in production, spanning data preparation, model development, training or fine‑tuning, integration, application logic, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
• Architect and build agentic and multi‑agent systems, including orchestration, task routing, shared state, tool use, agent handoffs, human oversight, and failure recovery.
• Design and build enterprise knowledge and retrieval systems across structured and unstructured data, using data pipelines, embeddings, hybrid search, reranking, metadata, and access‑controlled retrieval.
• Integrate AI solutions with enterprise applications, APIs, databases, data platforms, and governed tools.
• Establish automated testing, evaluation, and observability practices covering task success, model and retrieval quality, hallucination risk, tool execution, safety, latency, cost, drift, and regression.
• Design secure and responsible AI systems with least‑privilege access, auditability, sensitive‑data protection, and safeguards against prompt injection, data leakage, and unauthorized actions.
• Create reusable architectures, libraries, and engineering standards, and provide cross‑functional technical leadership through design reviews, mentoring, and stakeholder collaboration.
• Evaluate emerging Large Language Models, frameworks, and platforms and make evidence‑based adoption recommendations.

Skills

Python

Production ML

LLMs

Data pipelines

Security & governance

Stakeholder comms

Job description

About the role

Safe Software is looking for a Staff AI Engineer to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems across the organization.

This is a hands‑on engineering role responsible for the full AI lifecycle, from data preparation and model development through evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement. You will work across generative AI, applied machine learning, retrieval, and agentic systems while establishing reusable architectures and engineering standards for complex production implementations.

About the Team

AI Enablement helps Safe Software adopt AI effectively and responsibly. The team builds shared capabilities, platforms, and engineering standards while enabling departments to deliver AI solutions aligned with common security and governance practices.

What You'll Be Doing

• Design, build, evaluate, deploy, and operate end-to-end AI/ML systems in production, spanning data preparation, model development, training or fine‑tuning, integration, application logic, monitoring, and continuous improvement.

• Architect and build agentic and multi‑agent systems, including orchestration, task routing, shared state, tool use, agent handoffs, human oversight, and failure recovery.

• Design and build enterprise knowledge and retrieval systems across structured and unstructured data, using data pipelines, embeddings, hybrid search, reranking, metadata, and access‑controlled retrieval.

• Integrate AI solutions with enterprise applications, APIs, databases, data platforms, and governed tools.

• Establish automated testing, evaluation, and observability practices covering task success, model and retrieval quality, hallucination risk, tool execution, safety, latency, cost, drift, and regression.

• Design secure and responsible AI systems with least‑privilege access, auditability, sensitive‑data protection, and safeguards against prompt injection, data leakage, and unauthorized actions.

• Create reusable architectures, libraries, and engineering standards, and provide cross‑functional technical leadership through design reviews, mentoring, and stakeholder collaboration.

• Evaluate emerging Large Language Models, frameworks, and platforms and make evidence‑based adoption recommendations.

Qualifications, Skills, and Competencies

What We're Looking For

• 8+ years across software engineering and AI/ML, including 3+ years building and operating AI/ML systems in production at scale.

• Strong software engineering skills, particularly in Python or comparable backend technologies.

• Experience developing, adapting, fine‑tuning, evaluating, deploying, and monitoring AI or machine learning models.

• Applied AI experience in enterprise use cases such as chatbots, workflow automation, RAG, intelligent document processing, recommendation systems, or decision support.

• Strong understanding of generative AI, LLMs, retrieval systems, agent‑based architectures, and applied machine learning.

• Experience with production data pipelines, APIs, model‑serving infrastructure, testing, security, reliability, and observability.

• Ability to explain complex technical decisions and tradeoffs to engineering teams and business stakeholders.

Nice to Have

• Experience with agent and workflow orchestration tools such LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, CrewAI, or equivalent.

• Experience with vector databases, semantic or hybrid search, embeddings, and reranking.

• Experience with platforms such as Databricks, Snowflake, Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry/Azure AI, or equivalent.

• Familiarity with MCP, A2A, self‑hosted or open‑weight models, and hybrid AI architectures.

What You Can Expect

When you choose a career with Safe Software, you’re also choosing…

• Meaningful Work: Make a profound impact across our business, workplace and data integration product.

• A Supportive Environment: Feel empowered to share your ideas and implement them with high autonomy and team support.

• Social Responsibility: Become part of a team that finds meaningful ways to give back. Take paid time off to volunteer for one of our Safe‑organized opportunities that align with our core community initiatives.

• Learning & Career Development: We believe in your continuous learning and growth. Take advantage of an annual learning budget and training programs paid for by Safe.

• Flexible Working Hours: Flexible and remote‑friendly work arrangements to fit your lifestyle. Work when you want, and how you want to.

• Work-Life Balance: There's no place for burnout at Safe. Maintain a healthy balance of your personal and work life without splitting yourself in two. Enjoy 3 weeks of vacation to recharge, plus an additional paid 6 seasonal days off per year.

• Health & Wellness: Extended health, dental, health or lifestyle spending, and counseling benefits from day 1. That’s right, no waiting period.

• Family is important: We are dedicated to supporting our employees through parenthood and offer a Parental Leave Top‑Up Program for new parents through childbirth or adoption.

• Shared Success: Share in Safe’s success with our bi‑annual profit sharing and RRSP/TFSA matching program.

• An Accessible Commute: Regardless of your commute method, we’re located close to public transit, and provide complimentary parking and bike storage for our team!

About Safe Software

Safe Software transforms organizations with FME, the only All-Data Any-AI Enterprise Integration Platform connecting all your data, anywhere, at any velocity.

With over 30 years of expertise and 25,000+ enterprise customers across 125+ countries, we simplify your data journey, wherever it leads.

Founded in 1993, Safe is headquartered in Surrey, BC with over 300 team members and counting. We’re always looking for talented individuals with diverse backgrounds who are determined to learn and grow. Are you ready to join the team?

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Safe Software is an equal opportunity employer and we truly believe that innovation and strength begin with diversity and inclusion.

We welcome all candidates regardless of race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, ability, disability, national or ethnic origin, political belief, religion, or family status.

Should you require accommodations during the recruitment process, please contact [e-mail].

Notice Regarding Use of Automated Tools in Hiring

At Safe Software, we use automated tools to help us process applications and identify qualified candidates. These tools may assist in screening resumes and summarizing interview content based on the information you provide. This helps our team review applications efficiently while ensuring every candidate is considered based on the requirements of the role.

Please be assured that the final hiring decision is always made by a member of our team. For more information on how we protect your privacy, please see our policy. If you have questions about this process, please contact us at [e-mail].