Applied AI Engineer

Tata Consultancy Services; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 70,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Tata Consultancy Services is looking for a skilled engineer in Austin, TX, with a strong background in backend systems and production AI systems. The role emphasizes hands-on coding, having a deep understanding of cloud infrastructure using AWS, GCP, or Azure, and proficiency in Python.

The ideal candidate should have experience building AI features and working with Docker and Kubernetes. A competitive salary range from $70,000 to $130,000 per annum is offered.

Qualifications

• 3+ years building production backend or distributed systems.
• Experience shipping AI/LLM features at scale.
• Hands-on coding and debugging with production systems.

Skills

Backend/Systems Experience

Production AI Systems

Python

Cloud Infrastructure

Docker

Kubernetes

Tools

AWS

GCP

Azure

Go

TypeScript

Rust

Job description

Must-Have Requirements

Backend/Systems Experience

3+ years building production backend or distributed systems (pre-AI experience required)

Production AI Systems

Has shipped AI/LLM features serving real users at scale — not just prototypes or demos

Agentic Systems

Has built AI agents, skills, tools, or MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations

Python

Proficient for backend development

Secondary Language

Working knowledge of Go, TypeScript, or Rust

Cloud Infrastructure

Deep experience with AWS/GCP/Azure — cost optimization, compute decisions, not just deployment

Container & Orchestration

Hands-on with Docker and Kubernetes — can build, deploy, debug, and scale services themselves

LLM Integration

Understands token economics, context limits, rate limiting, structured outputs, API failure modes

LLM Evaluation

Understands how to evaluate LLM outputs and the inherent challenges (non-determinism, quality measurement, regression detection)

Hands‑On Engineer

Not just an architect — writes code, debugs production issues, deploys their own work

Preferred / Differentiators

• Built multi-step agentic workflows with tool use and function calling
• Experience with agent orchestration frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI, Claude Agent SDK, Google ADK, OpenAI ADK)
• Built guardrails, fallbacks, or graceful degradation for AI systems
• Streaming inference and async agent orchestration
• Cost/latency optimization: caching, batching, prompt compression
• ML observability tools: Langfuse, Arize, Braintrust, W&B
• Retrieval systems (vector search, hybrid search) — as a tool, not the focus

Location: Austin, TX

Salary Range: $70,000-$130,000 Per a Year