Applied AI Engineers for telecommunications company

Toptal; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Toptal is seeking a Senior AI Professional to design, develop, and optimize production-grade agentic AI solutions within our platform engineering ecosystem. You will turn AI concepts into reliable software and collaborate with product teams and business stakeholders.

The role emphasizes prompt optimization, model behavior, orchestration, and rigorous evaluation to improve AI quality, reliability, and performance in production environments.

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in machine learning and applied AI.
• Production AI/ML service development and deployment experience.
• Strong software engineering and coding skills.
• Experience with prompt engineering and optimization.
• Experience with APIs, data pipelines and backend systems.
• Familiarity with cloud environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize production-grade agentic AI solutions.
• Run meaningful evaluations to improve prompts, model behavior, orchestration, reliability and performance in production.

Skills

Machine learning

Software engineering

Prompt engineering

API integration

Data pipelines

Backend systems

AI platforms

Python

Model evaluation

Cloud environments

Tools

LLM frameworks

AI toolchains

Cloud platforms

Job description

Summary

The Senior AI Professional will help design, develop, and optimize production-grade agentic AI solutions. This role complements an existing platform engineering team and focuses on turning AI concepts into reliable, scalable software rather than purely research-oriented work.

General information

This engagement requires deep hands-on expertise in machine learning and applied AI, with a strong emphasis on prompt optimization, model behavior, agent orchestration, and evaluation. The work will involve collaborating with platform engineers, product teams, and business stakeholders to improve AI quality, reliability, and performance in production environments.

Tasks and Deliverables

• Design, develop, and optimize production-grade agentic AI solutions.
• Run meaningful evaluations to improve prompts, model behavior, orchestration, reliability, and performance in production.

Required experience

Deep expertise in machine learning and applied AI. Experience building and deploying production-level AI/ML services. Strong software engineering and coding skills. Experience developing or optimizing LLM- and agent-based applications. Strong knowledge of prompt engineering and optimization. Strong knowledge of model evaluation and benchmarking. Strong knowledge of AI quality, reliability, and performance measurement. Strong knowledge of agent behavior and orchestration. Ability to design and run meaningful evaluations and interpret results. Experience with APIs, data pipelines, backend systems, and AI platforms. Familiarity with modern AI tools, frameworks, and cloud environments. Ability to collaborate with platform engineers, product teams, and business stakeholders. Strong communication skills and experience delivering maintainable, production-quality solutions. Nice to have:

Nice to have:

• Python experience.
• Background as an Applied AI Scientist, AI Engineer, or Machine Learning Engineer.
• Engagement highlights Own a defined production AI workstream with direct impact on reliability and scale.
• Work closely with an existing platform engineering team on applied AI delivery.
• Focus on production-grade AI implementation rather than purely research-oriented work.