AI Engineer (US)

Nexus Black; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Nexus Black, an AI-first business within IFS, seeks engineers to build agentic systems that reason, orchestrate, and produce traceable outputs for enterprise customers. You will ship production code from week one and bring learnings from field visits back into development.

You’ll design multi-step workflows, own evaluation, and ensure reliability with observability and error handling. A strong background in Python/TypeScript and model APIs is required, with a passion for practical deployments.

Qualifications

• Shipped systems using model APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI or similar).
• Built eval pipelines with golden datasets and regression suites.
• Strong software fundamentals: Python/TypeScript, Git, testing, CI.
• Able to reason about when deterministic code beats a model call.
• Curious about the physical world and user contexts such as field service environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and build agentic workflows with multi-step tool use and orchestration.
• Own evaluation: define correctness, build eval harnesses and golden datasets.
• Add production-grade features: observability, tracing, and robust error handling.
• Engage with customer rides and field visits to translate learnings into code improvements.
• Work with coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor) daily and continuously improve tooling.
• Contribute like an owner: PR reviews, design docs, and documentation.

Skills

LLM production experience

Python

TypeScript

Git

Testing

CI/CD

Deterministic code over model calls

Observability

Field/industrial curiosity

Tools

Claude

LangChain

LangGraph

LangSmith

Cursor

Job description

About Nexus Black

Nexus Black is an AI-first business within IFS, built to move quickly, challenge traditional ways of working, and turn the potential of AI into real-world outcomes for enterprise customers. We build AI to solve hard problems for the industries that keep the world turning: up on power lines, down on factory floors, and out in the field.

Our products — Resolve (field service and predictive maintenance), Flow (production planning), Comply (regulatory compliance) and Reason (analytical reasoning) — are used by technicians and engineers who cannot afford a tool that doesn't work first time. We pair 40 years of IFS industrial depth with the technical pace of a start-up, and we get results in weeks, not months.

We’re building a team of highly capable, high-ownership people who are comfortable operating across traditional boundaries. We care less about rigid job descriptions and more about people who can understand a problem, get hands‑on, and own the outcome.

The role

You’ll build the agentic systems behind our products: agents that reason and orchestrate, deterministic code that calculates, and every output traceable. You’ll ship production code from week one, and then watch a field technician use it on a customer site, because that’s where our engineering standard is set.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build agentic workflows — multi-step tool use, retrieval, and orchestration — using Claude, LangChain/LangGraph and whatever earns its place next.
• Own evaluation. Define what “correct” means for a workflow, build eval harnesses and golden datasets, and hold the line: if it wouldn’t convince a 30-year veteran, it doesn’t ship.
• Take features from prototype to production: observability, tracing (LangSmith), error handling, and reliability that survives week six, not just the demo.
• Join customer ride‑alongs and site visits — plants, hangars, the field — and bring what you learn straight back into the code.
• Work with coding agents daily (Claude Code, Cursor) — they’re how we work, not a novelty — and keep making your own job smaller.
• Contribute like an owner: PR reviews, design docs, and a culture of writing things down.

What You’ll Bring

• Production experience with LLMs — you’ve shipped systems using model APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI or similar), not just notebooks: system‑level prompt design, agent architectures, tool use, RAG.
• An evaluation habit. You’ve built eval pipelines — golden datasets, regression suites, LLM‑as‑judge where it’s honest — and you can tell a good demo from a system that holds up in production.
• Strong software fundamentals: Python and/or TypeScript, Git, testing, CI, and the judgement to know when deterministic code beats a model call.
• Comfort with ambiguity and pace — small team, broad remit, shipping over ceremony.
• Curiosity about the physical world. Our users fix aircraft and keep grids running; you should want to understand their job well enough to build for it.

Nice to have

• Retrieval infrastructure at scale (vector stores, hybrid search, reranking).
• Fine‑tuning or model‑adaption experience where it genuinely beat prompting.
• Experience in industrial, field‑service or other asset‑heavy domains.
• Open‑source contributions or a portfolio of shipped AI systems.

Why Nexus Black

We’re a small team building AI that has to work the first time, because the people using it are forty feet up a utility pole. AI tooling isn’t a side experiment here — it’s how we work every day. If you want your code in the hands of people who keep the world running, we’d like to talk. Less talk. More impact.

Compensation Range: $180K - $240K