AI Developer

MinutePay Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Salvo Software is hiring an AI Developer to join its growing AI department in the US. You will build and operate LLM-powered systems, serve open-source models with Ollama and llama.cpp, and develop MCP integrations that connect LLMs to internal tools and data sources.

You will work on backend services in Python, implement RAG pipelines, and contribute to model optimization with quantization and GPU tuning as you ramp up. Strong DevOps fundamentals in Docker and CI/CD are essential.

Qualifications

• 3+ years engineering experience with production-level Python for real services and AI workloads.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs using Ollama/llama.cpp and RAG.
• Experience with Azure/AWS, Docker, CI/CD.
• Backend services development and data processing experience.
• Familiarity with model quantization and GPU tuning is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Serve and operate open-source LLMs using Ollama/llama.cpp, locally and on-prem.
• Build and maintain RAG pipelines: embeddings, vector databases, chunking strategies, retrieval quality.
• Develop MCP integrations connecting LLMs to internal tools and data sources.
• Build backend services in Python powering ML inference and AI-driven features.
• Parse and process structured data (XML/XSD, Office formats).
• Assist model optimization including quantization and GPU tuning.

Skills

Python

LLM

Docker

Azure

CI/CD

RAG

Ollama

llama.cpp

Kafka

MCP

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Linux

Windows

Job description

Job Description

Salvo Software is a global technology company specializing in custom software development and advanced engineering solutions. With distributed teams across the US, LATAM, and India, we partner with clients to build high-performance, scalable systems that solve complex technical challenges. Our culture values innovation, ownership, and engineering excellence. We're growing our AI department and are looking for a hands-on AI Developer to help build it.

Role OverviewWe are looking for an AI Developer to join and strengthen our AI department. Your core work will be building and operating LLM-powered systems: serving open-source models with Ollama and llama.cpp, building RAG pipelines, and developing MCP integrations that connect large language models to real tools and data. Solid DevOps fundamentals - Docker, CI/CD, Azure - support this work, but AI engineering is the heart of the role.

You don't need to be a deep ML researcher. What matters is production-grade Python, strong fundamentals, and the aptitude to learn fast. You'll work closely with our engineering and product teams to take LLM-powered features from prototype to reliably deployed systems, with mentorship available as you ramp up in areas like RAG architecture, Kafka, and advanced MCP work.

Key ResponsibilitiesAI / LLM Engineering (core focus)

• Serve and operate open-source LLMs using Ollama and llama.cpp, locally and in on-prem environments.
• Build and maintain RAG pipelines: embeddings, vector databases, chunking strategies, and retrieval quality.
• Develop MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations connecting LLMs to internal tools and data sources.
• Build backend services in Python that power ML inference and AI-driven product features.
• Parse and process structured and semi-structured data (XML/XSD, Office document formats) as pipeline inputs.
• Grow into model optimization over time: quantization (GGUF), GPU/CUDA tuning, and offline/air-gapped deployments.

DevOps & Infrastructure (supporting)

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for AI services (Azure DevOps preferred; GitHub Actions / GitLab CI also used).
• Deploy AI workloads to Microsoft Azure,AWS and containerize services with Docker.
• Automate operational tasks with Python, Bash and/or PowerShell scripting.
• Troubleshoot across the stack - dig into root causes rather than patching symptoms.
• Support event-driven architectures using Apache Kafka (producers/consumers).

• 3â5+ years engineering experience with production-level Python for building real services, LLM inference, RAG pipelines, and automated tooling.
• Hands-on LLM & AI integration serving models via Ollama/llama.cpp, implementing vector retrieval/RAG, and developing MCP integrations (GPU/CUDA tuning & model quantization nice to have).
• Cloud & Infrastructure expertise covering Azure/AWS deployments, Docker containerization, Linux/Windows admin, and CI/CD automation (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI), with Terraform, Kubernetes, Kafka, or systems languages (Go, Rust, C+