Senior Python / Conversational AI Engineer

Zorba AI; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 3,000,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Zorba AI is seeking an experienced Conversational AI Engineer to design and implement end-to-end LLM-powered workflows, spanning dialog, orchestration and knowledge layers, with emphasis on stateful multi-step processes.

You will own CI/CD pipelines, integration with backend systems, and production incident handling while collaborating with engineering, product and security teams.

Qualifications

• 10+ years overall IT/software engineering experience.

Responsibilities

• Build and modify conversational flows across dialog, orchestration and knowledge layers.

Skills

Python

REST APIs

JSON

API integrations

OOP

Async programming

Tools

Git

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

CI/CD

Job description

• Build and modify conversational flows across dialog, orchestration and knowledge layers.
• Design and optimize stateful, multi-step workflows, including session and context management.
• Perform RAG and knowledge-retrieval tuning to improve response quality and relevance.
• Design and maintain escalation logic, including transfer conditions, routing destinations, context payloads and reason-code registration.
• Work with LLM-driven conversational systems, including prompt behavior, guardrails and model-generated content.
• Integrate backend systems through established handler/API layers.
• Develop secure REST API integrations using appropriate authentication and certificate-management mechanisms.
• Author and maintain automated unit tests, mocks and platform-level conversational test cases.
• Build and own CI/CD pipelines covering validation, automated testing and gated promotion across environments.
• Follow Git-based branching, release and environment-promotion strategies.
• Own application deployment and rollback procedures.
• Act as a first responder for production incidents.
• Diagnose production issues independently using logs, traces and metrics.
• Identify root cause and implement permanent fixes with corresponding regression tests.
• Manage configuration and feature-flag governance.
• Maintain design, state, test and implementation documentation aligned with actual system behavior.
• Analyze and reconcile platform changes originating outside version control and determine whether the impact is behavioral or cosmetic.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, QA, security and infrastructure teams.

Core Responsibilities

• Build and modify conversational flows across dialog, orchestration and knowledge layers.
• Design and optimize stateful, multi-step workflows, including session and context management.
• Perform RAG and knowledge-retrieval tuning to improve response quality and relevance.
• Design and maintain escalation logic, including transfer conditions, routing destinations, context payloads and reason-code registration.
• Work with LLM-driven conversational systems, including prompt behavior, guardrails and model-generated content.
• Integrate backend systems through established handler/API layers.
• Develop secure REST API integrations using appropriate authentication and certificate-management mechanisms.
• Author and maintain automated unit tests, mocks and platform-level conversational test cases.
• Maintain comprehensive regression test suites.
• Build and own CI/CD pipelines covering validation, automated testing and gated promotion across environments.
• Follow Git-based branching, release and environment-promotion strategies.
• Own application deployment and rollback procedures.
• Act as a first responder for production incidents.
• Diagnose production issues independently using logs, traces and metrics.
• Identify root cause and implement permanent fixes with corresponding regression tests.
• Manage configuration and feature-flag governance.
• Maintain design, state, test and implementation documentation aligned with actual system behavior.
• Analyze and reconcile platform changes originating outside version control and determine whether the impact is behavioral or cosmetic.
• Collaborate with engineering, product, QA, security and infrastructure teams.

Required Technical Expertise

Programming

• Python
• REST APIs
• JSON
• API integrations
• Object-oriented programming
• Asynchronous/event-driven programming

Conversational AI / GenAI

• Conversational workflow development
• LLM-based applications
• Prompt engineering
• Guardrails
• RAG / knowledge retrieval
• Context and session management
• Multi-step/stateful orchestration
• Escalation and routing logic

API & Security

• REST APIs
• OAuth 2.0
• JWT / JWT Client Assertions
• mTLS
• SSL/TLS certificates
• Certificate lifecycle management
• Secrets management
• Secure API authentication

Testing

• PyTest or equivalent
• Unit testing
• Mocking
• Integration testing
• API testing
• Regression testing
• Conversation/platform-level testing

DevOps

• Git
• GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Azure DevOps
• CI/CD pipeline development
• Branching strategies
• Environment promotion
• Automated validation and deployment
• Rollback

Production & Observability

• Log analysis
• Metrics
• Distributed tracing
• Production incident management
• Root-cause analysis
• Performance troubleshooting
• Monitoring and observability

Preferred Candidate Profile

• 10+ years overall IT/software engineering experience
• 5+ years of professional Python development
• Strong hands-on experience building stateful, multi-step applications
• Proven experience with LLM/conversational AI or workflow orchestration
• Strong API security and integration background
• Strong automated testing discipline
• Hands-on CI/CD ownership
• Experience owning production deployments and incident resolution
• Ability to understand and extend an existing SDK/framework without modifying its core
• Strong communication and documentation skills