AI Solutions Engineer

College of the Holy Cross; United States; On-site; USD 114,000 - 121,000; Full time

Job summary

College of the Holy Cross is seeking an AI Solutions Engineer to build and support AI-powered applications, agents, and integrations that support teaching, learning, and operations.

The role emphasizes agentic design, with human oversight, modular releases, and collaboration with the AI leadership team. You will work across Enterprise Systems, Data Architecture, and Information Security to deliver secure, scalable solutions.

Qualifications

• Two+ years of software or AI engineering experience with LLM-powered applications.
• Experience building agentic systems: tool calling and multi-step workflows.
• Proficient with agent development frameworks such as Claude Agent SDK or Google ADK.

Responsibilities

• Build, test, and deploy AI agents that plan, call tools, and complete multi-step tasks with human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
• Implement interfaces for agents to interact with College systems safely using modern APIs and middleware.
• Design agent workflows with bounded scope, clear permissions, retries, and defined fallbacks.
• Develop solutions using agent frameworks such as Claude Agent SDK and Google ADK.
• Collaborate with Principal AI Solutions Engineer and other teams to translate requirements into working software and maintain documentation.

Skills

AI engineering

Large language models

API integration

Cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Firebase)

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, or related field

Tools

Claude Agent SDK

Google ADK

AWS/GCP/Firebase

Job description

At Holy Cross, we are focused on creating a world-class workforce by attracting and retaining employees dedicated to fostering a culture of professionalism, pride, mutual trust, and respect—one that values appreciation and recognition, empowering each of us to flourish both individually and collectively. We seek candidates who are inspired by our mission and values, and who are eager to make a meaningful difference on our campus. Learn more about Life at Holy Cross here.

AI Solutions Engineer

The AI Solutions Engineer builds and supports AI-powered applications, agents, and integrations that serve teaching, learning, and College operations. The emphasis of this role is agentic: designing and building systems that plan, call tools, and carry multi-step work through to completion with appropriate human oversight, rather than systems that simply answer questions. The Engineer works closely with the Principal AI Solutions Engineer, who sets architectural direction and owns technical strategy. Within that direction, this role turns defined problems into working, instrumented, supportable software, releasing in small increments. It is an individual contributor role with no supervisory responsibility, expected to grow toward greater architectural ownership over time. The Engineer also partners with the Director for Applied Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, so that ideas from faculty work have a clear path into working systems.

Major Areas of Responsibility

Agentic development

• Build, test, and deploy AI agents that plan, select and call tools, and complete multi-step tasks, with human-in-the-loop checkpoints where judgment or risk requires them.
• Implement the tool and function interfaces that let agents act on College systems safely, using modern APIs and middleware.
• Design agent workflows that degrade gracefully: bounded scope, clear permissions, sensible retries, and a defined fallback when a task cannot be completed.
• Develop point solutions, applications, and integrations using agent frameworks such as the Claude Agent SDK and Google ADK.
• Translate requirements into working software quickly, favoring small releases over long build cycles.

Evaluation, guardrails, and reliability

• Build evaluation sets and test harnesses so agent behavior is measured rather than assumed, and regressions surface before users do.
• Implement guardrails, permission scoping, and logging so that agent actions are auditable and failures are contained.
• Monitor deployed agents for cost, latency, error rates, and behavioral drift, and tune accordingly.
• Support and maintain existing applications and agents in production.

Collaboration and delivery

• Work closely with the Principal AI Solutions Engineer, following architectural direction and contributing to design and technical review.
• Partner with the Director for Applied Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies on faculty-facing work and on the AI Exploration Lab.
• Coordinate with colleagues in Enterprise Systems, Data Architecture, and Information Security so solutions are integrated, secure, and supportable.
• Gather requirements from staff and faculty stakeholders and translate them into technical tasks and realistic estimates.
• Maintain clear documentation of what each agent does, what it is permitted to touch, and how to operate it.
• Other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Two or more years of software or AI engineering experience, including hands-on work building and deploying applications powered by large language models.
• Demonstrated experience building agentic systems: tool and function calling, multi-step workflows, and orchestration across services.
• Working proficiency with agent development frameworks such as the Claude Agent SDK or Google ADK.
• Solid engineering fundamentals: version control, automated testing, CI/CD, and deployment to a cloud platform such as AWS, GCP, or Firebase.
• Experience integrating with APIs and enterprise platforms.
• Ability to explain technical choices clearly to colleagues who are not engineers.
• Familiarity with evaluation and guardrail practices for AI systems, and experience in higher education, are both preferred.

Salary: The salary range for the AI Solutions Engineer position is $114,000–$121,000, commensurate with education, experience, and qualifications.

Weekly Hours: 40 Annual Work Schedule: 12 month

Additional Information

To review our generous benefits options, please review our detailed information here or check out our Benefits at a Glance. The College also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities during the hiring process in compliance with law. Please contact Human Resources for questions or to request an accommodation via email at [e-mail], or by calling 508-793-3391.

The College is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and complies with all Federal and Massachusetts laws concerning Equal Opportunity in the workplace.

Founded in 1843 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the College of the Holy Cross is among the nation's leading liberal arts institutions. A highly selective, four-year, exclusively undergraduate college of 3,200 students, Holy Cross is renowned for offering a rigorous, personalized education in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition.

To work at The College is to accept an invitation to participate in the growth and development of all campus members, students, faculty and staff.

The College's commitment to diversity is an important feature of the Holy Cross education.

Informed by the presence of diverse interpretations of the human experience, Holy Cross is building a community marked by freedom, mutual respect, and civility.

We seek others who support our values of justice and inclusiveness and encourage all to apply.

For the third year in a row, Holy Cross is honored to be a WorkWell winner and a Top 100 Healthiest Employer in America! Learn more about life at Holy Cross on our LinkedIn Life page or view our website to explore our generous benefit offerings.