Associate Applied AI Engineer

Groundswell; Virginia (MN); On-site; USD 88,000 - 172,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-site gym and childcare option

4% 401K Match

Job summary

Groundswell is hiring an Associate Applied AI Engineer for an onsite role in Virginia, combining hands-on engineering with client-facing delivery. You will translate technical approaches into production-ready AI-enabled applications, integrating prompts, retrieval, APIs, and data handling to meet client outcomes.

The role requires building and evaluating AI systems, communicating findings, and supporting demos and proofs of concept for client challenges. U.S.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent demonstrated ability.
• 1+ years of professional software development experience.
• Hands-on experience building applications that integrate large language models, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, structured extraction, and/or tool use.
• Experience contributing to applications that integrate AI capabilities with APIs, data handling, and user-facing functionality.
• Familiarity with Python, TypeScript, or SQL, including integrating APIs and working with imperfect data.
• Ability to lead a requirements conversation with a non-technical stakeholder.
• U.S. Citizenship is required.

Responsibilities

• Turn a defined technical approach into production-quality functionality.
• Join requirements discussions with business stakeholders to understand workflow, business need, and desired outcome.
• Propose alternative solution approaches and simplify the system where appropriate.
• Build AI-enabled applications with prompts, retrieval, API integration, and user-facing features.
• Create evaluation sets from real data and report findings accurately.
• Investigate failures and implement fixes.
• Support client demos and proofs of concept.
• Seek feedback and expand understanding of client needs and AI best practices.
• Instrument and document work including logging and validation methods.
• Shift between client delivery, product work, and rapid proofs of concept as needed.
• Surface blockers and explain results that are not trusted.
• Contribute reusable patterns and evaluation harnesses.

Skills

Bachelor's degree

1+ years experience

LLM application development

APIs and data handling

Python

TypeScript

SQL

Communication

U.S. Citizenship

Education

Bachelor’s degree in technical field

Tools

Python

TypeScript

SQL

AWS Bedrock

Azure OpenAI

Appian

OutSystems

Mendix

Microsoft Power Platform

ServiceNow

Salesforce

Job description

Groundswell is hiring an Associate Applied AI Engineer for an onsite role in Virginia, combining hands‑on engineering with client‑fac

What you’ll do

• Turn a defined technical approach into production-quality functionality.
• Join requirements discussions with business stakeholders to understand the workflow, business need, and desired outcome.
• Bring ideas and alternative solution approaches, including opportunities to simplify the system or reduce the AI component where appropriate.
• Build complete AI-enabled applications, covering prompt and retrieval design, structured outputs, tool and function definitions, API integration, data handling, error handling, and user-facing functionality.
• Create evaluation sets from real data, measure results against them, and report findings accurately, including results that do not support the chosen approach.
• Investigate failures by locating where a capability produced incorrect results, characterize the root cause, and implement fixes.
• Support client demos and proofs of concept to show how AI can be applied to customer business challenges.
• Seek feedback, ask thoughtful questions, and continuously expand understanding of client needs and AI best practices.
• Instrument and document work, including logging, traceability, intended behavior, known limitations, validation methods, and failure handling.
• Shift between client delivery, internal product work, rapid proofs of concept, and internal enablement based on project needs.
• Surface blockers, unclear requirements, and results that are not trusted early rather than working around them.
• Contribute reusable patterns, prompts, and evaluation harnesses back to the team.

What you’ll need

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field, or equivalent demonstrated ability.
• 1+ years of professional software development experience.
• Hands-on experience building applications that integrate large language models, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, structured extraction, and/or tool use (experience may come from professional work, internships, academic research, or significant personal/open-source projects).
• Experience contributing to applications that integrate AI capabilities with APIs, data handling, and user-facing functionality.
• Familiarity with a general-purpose language such as Python, TypeScript, or SQL, including integrating APIs and working with imperfect data.
• Ability to lead a requirements conversation with a non-technical stakeholder, identify the underlying need, and return with a proposed approach.
• Willingness to question designs, including designs provided by others, and advocate for alternatives.
• Ability to work through ambiguous requirements with guidance, ask thoughtful questions, and drive assigned work to completion.
• Clear written and verbal communication, since this role produces documentation and materials clients read.
• Candor about the limits of your knowledge and willingness to ask rather than assume.
• U.S. Citizenship required, with ability to obtain and maintain any federal government background investigation, suitability determination, or security clearance required by client engagements.

Technologies you may work with

• Python
• TypeScript
• SQL
• AWS Bedrock
• Azure OpenAI
• Appian
• OutSystems
• Mendix
• Microsoft Power Platform
• ServiceNow
• Salesforce

Compensation

USD 88,177 - 171,637 per year.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• Flexible Spending Account
• 4% 401K Match (immediate vesting)
• Paid Time Off
• Tuition reimbursement, certification programs, and professional development
• Flexible work schedule
• On-site gym and childcare option

Preferred qualifications

• Prior client‑facing work in consulting, solutions engineering, professional services, or implementation
• Experience with a low‑code or application platform such as Appian, OutSystems, Mendix, Microsoft Power Platform, ServiceNow, or Salesforce
• Public sector or regulated‑industry delivery experience
• Experience with cloud AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure OpenAI** (needs closing): We'll fix soon. Wait! I included an incomplete tag. Let's correct. Actually we need to ensure we close all tags properly. Let's finalize correctly.