Associate Principal, AI Engineering

New York Technology Partners; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

New York Technology Partners in Chicago, IL, seeks an Associate Principal, AI Engineering to design and deliver agentic AI systems end-to-end on Anthropic Claude and AWS infrastructure. You will mentor junior engineers and contribute to AI governance and architecture decisions.

You will own the architecture, build robust evaluation pipelines, and ensure secure, compliant AI deployments in a fast-moving, greenfield environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering or related field; Master's preferred.
• 4–7 years of software engineering with production AI/LLM systems experience.
• Experience mentoring or elevating junior engineers; ownership of production systems.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end design and delivery of agentic AI systems from architecture to production.
• Architect agent orchestration patterns, integration, and evaluation pipelines.
• Own AI infrastructure on AWS and contribute to self-sufficient team infra.
• Implement safeguards for AI risks including hallucination detection and prompt injection defense.
• Build audit logging and human-in-the-loop checkpoints in regulated workflows.
• Mentor junior engineers through reviews and code/architecture guidance.

Skills

Python

SQL

Distributed systems

LLM apps

AI risk

AWS

CI/CD

Docker

Kubernetes

AI governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master's preferred

Tools

Claude API

Anthropic Claude

Terraform

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Job title: Associate Principal, AI Engineering

Location: Chicago, IL

Summary

Company's AI Research & Engineering (AIRE) team is building the company's first generation of agentic AI capabilities on Anthropic's Claude models and AWS infrastructure.

The Associate Principal, AI Engineering owns the design and delivery of agentic AI systems end-to-end, mentors junior engineers, and contributes technical judgment on AI application and/or AI infrastructure work in a largely greenfield environment.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

• To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each primary duty satisfactorily.
• Own the design and delivery of agentic AI systems end-to-end, from architecture through production deployment
• Architect agent orchestration patterns, tool and context integration, and evaluation pipelines for reliability in a regulated environment
• Own AI infrastructure supporting AIRE's agents and applications on AWS, and contribute to the team's growing infrastructure self-sufficiency
• Implement technical safeguards against AI-specific risks, including hallucination detection, prompt injection defense, and output validation, in collaboration with client's AI Governance function
• Build audit logging and human-in-the-loop checkpoints into agentic workflows so agent actions remain traceable and reviewable in a regulated environment
• Mentor Associate and Senior Associate engineers through code and architecture review
• Contribute technical point of view to the team's evolving engineering standards and practices, in partnership with the Executive Director

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• None (no direct reports; mentors junior engineers without formal supervisory authority)

Qualifications:

• The requirements listed are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the primary functions.
• Experience mentoring or elevating the work of junior engineers
• Demonstrated ownership of production systems from design through deployment
• Ability to work effectively in a still-forming, fast-moving team environment
• This position is not eligible for employment visa sponsorship. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for sponsorship now or in the future.

Technical Skills:

• Required: Strong Python; proficient SQL; solid distributed systems and API design fundamentals
• Required: Hands-on experience building LLM-powered applications or agentic systems
• Required: Working knowledge of AI-specific risk areas (prompt injection, output validation, hallucination mitigation, data privacy), or demonstrated ability to build this expertise quickly
• Required: Cloud infrastructure experience (AWS preferred); comfort with Docker, CI/CD, and containerization fundamentals
• Preferred: Direct experience with Claude, the Anthropic API, or Claude.ai/Console
• Preferred: Experience designing agent orchestration or Model Context Protocol (MCP)-based integrations
• Preferred: Production experience operating LLM-powered applications or agentic systems at scale
• Preferred: Kubernetes and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform)
• Preferred: Background in financial services, derivatives, or other regulated industries
• Preferred: Exposure to AI security practices such as red-teaming or adversarial testing of model inputs and outputs
• Preferred: Data engineering experience (pipelines, data modeling), particularly for candidates interested in AI infrastructure work

Education and/or Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field; Master's preferred
• 4-7 years of software engineering experience, with production AI/LLM systems experience preferred