Applied AI Engineer: Client‑Facing & Impactful

Groundswell; Town of Vermont (WI); On-site; USD 88,000 - 172,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision plans

Flexible Spending Account

4% 401K match

Paid time off

Tuition reimbursement and professional

Flexible work schedule

On-site gym and childcare option

Job summary

Groundswell is seeking an engineer to transform an incompletely defined business need into working software. This hands-on, client-facing role involves collaborating with stakeholders to refine requirements and define a technical approach, then delivering production-quality solutions.

The position spans client delivery, internal product development, rapid proofs of concept, and enablement work. You will balance building functionality with direct customer interaction and aim to generalize

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent demonstrated ability.
• 1+ years of professional software development experience.
• Hands-on experience building apps that integrate large language models, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, structured extraction, and/or tool use.
• Experience integrating AI capabilities with APIs, data handling, and user-facing functionality.
• Familiarity with Python, TypeScript, or SQL, and API integration with imperfect data.
• Ability to discuss requirements with non-technical stakeholders and propose an approach.
• Willingness to question designs and suggest alternatives.
• Ability to work through ambiguous requirements with guidance and drive work to completion.
• Clear written and verbal communication; candor about knowledge limits.
• U.S. Citizenship and ability to obtain security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Take a defined technical approach and build it into production‑quality functionality.
• Participate in requirements discussions with business stakeholders to understand workflow, needs, and desired outcomes.
• Contribute ideas and alternative approaches during solution design.
• Build complete applications that integrate AI with prompts, retrieval, outputs, API integration, data handling, and user-facing features.
• Create evaluation sets from real data, measure results, and report findings honestly.
• Investigate failures by identifying causes and implementing fixes.
• Support client demonstrations and proof‑of‑concepts to show AI value.
• Seek feedback and continuously refine client understanding and AI best practices.
• Document work with logging, traceability, and validation methods.
• Move between client delivery, internal product work, rapid proofs of concept, and enablement as needed.
• Raise blockers early and share results you don’t trust; contribute reusable patterns.

Skills

LLM integration

Prompt engineering

Retrieval augmented generation

Structured extraction

Tool use

Education

Bachelor's degree in a technical field

Job description

Groundswell is seeking an engineer to transform an incompletely defined business need into working software. This hands-on, client-facing role involves collaborating with stakeholders to refine requirements and define a technical approach, then delivering production-quality solutions.

The position spans client delivery, internal product development, rapid proofs of concept, and enablement work. You will balance building functionality with direct customer interaction and aim to generalize