AI Engineer / Developer– (Model Tuning & Applied AI) - Onsite

CGS Business Solutions; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 75,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A recruitment firm specializing in IT consulting is seeking an entry-level AI Engineer in Irvine, CA. This contract-to-hire role involves fine-tuning AI models and optimizing pipelines. Ideal candidates should have a strong coding foundation and be eager to learn AI engineering. Opportunities for growth are available, alongside mentoring from experienced professionals. Competitive salary range is $75,000 - $80,000 annually.

Qualifications

• Proven AI coding ability.
• Willingness to show past projects or share live code.
• Curiosity about model tuning and embeddings.

Responsibilities

• Fine‑tune and adapt models from various ecosystems.
• Build and optimize RAG pipelines for text and image applications.
• Create internal AI tools and APIs.

Skills

AI coding ability

Node.js or React

Interest in PyTorch, Hugging Face, TensorFlow

Creative problem solving

Familiarity with Azure cloud services

Job description

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CGS Business Solutions provided pay range

This range is provided by CGS Business Solutions. Your actual pay will be based on your skills and experience — talk with your recruiter to learn more.

Base pay range

$75,000.00/yr - $80,000.00/yr

CGS Business Solutions is committed to helping you, as an esteemed IT Professional, find the next right step in your career. We match professionals like you to rewarding consulting or full-time opportunities in your area of expertise. We are currently seeking Technical Professionals who are searching for challenging and rewarding jobs for the following opportunity:

Our client in Orange County, CA, an innovative leader with specialty in the Military/DoD space is seeking an entry-level AI Engineer to join their team. This is a contract‑to‑hire role designed for someone with a strong coding foundation and a fire in the belly to grow into applied AI engineering.

We welcome candidates from non‑traditional backgrounds—whether you’re a self‑taught programmer, college student, or early‑career developer—as long as you can demonstrate your ability. Past projects, code samples, GitHub repos, or even a live coding demo will be part of the evaluation process.

What You’ll Do

• Fine‑tune and adapt models from Anthropic and open‑source/local ecosystems (e.g., LLaMA, Mistral, Stable Diffusion)
• Build and optimize retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) pipelines for text and image applications
• Create internal AI tools and APIs to deliver real business outcomes
• Manage training and inference workloads on cloud GPUs (Azure, AWS, etc.)
• Experiment with efficiency techniques (LoRA, quantization, adapters)
• Prepare datasets and evaluate models with a focus on applied performance

What We’re Looking For

• Proven AI coding ability (Node.js or React helpful)
• Willingness to show past projects or share live code
• Exposure to (or strong interest in learning) PyTorch, Hugging Face, TensorFlow
• Curiosity about model tuning, embeddings, and RAG systems
• Familiarity with Azure cloud services or other cloud GPU platforms
• Creative problem solver who can learn fast and adapt
• A builder’s mindset—we value drive, not just degrees

Why This Role

• Opportunity to break into AI engineering with hands‑on mentoring
• Work with both frontier AI models (Anthropic) and local open‑source models
• Real‑world projects across text, image, and applied tool creation
• Grow quickly in a fast‑paced, outcome‑driven environment