Azure AI Engineer - Client-Facing

Latitude; Minneapolis, Northern (MN, KY); Hybrid; USD 83,000 - 152,000; Part time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits (medical, dental, and,

401k

Paid time off

Disability insurance

Life insurance

MN Paid Family and Medical Leave

Job summary

Growth Operators is seeking an Azure AI Engineer to serve as the primary technical builder for a client solution. You will work with Growth Operators' IT leadership and the client's internal team to design, develop, and deploy end-to-end data ingestion, extraction, enrichment, and orchestration pipelines in Azure.

Responsibilities include building document understanding, retrieval, and scoring layers, integrating with ERP/CRM systems, and ensuring observability and governance.

Qualifications

• 2 to 3+ years designing and shipping AI or ML solutions on Microsoft Azure, including at least one production deployment you personally built and supported.

Responsibilities

• Build and deploy the end-to-end order intake pipeline: document ingestion, extraction, enrichment, validation, exception handling, and posting to downstream systems.
• Implement document understanding and extraction against semi-structured and unstructured order documents (PDFs, emails, scanned forms, spreadsheets) with measurable accuracy targets.
• Design and build the retrieval layer, including indexing strategy, chunking, embeddings, hybrid and semantic ranking, and grounding against product catalog and customer master data.
• Develop and operationalize agents and orchestration logic in Microsoft Foundry (Azure AI Foundry), including tool and function calling, prompt design, and structured output contracts.
• Build the ETL and data movement layers that land raw and curated data in Azure Data Lake Storage and Blob Storage, and integrate with the client's in-flight data warehouse.
• Integrate with source and target systems (CRM, ERP, logistics, and accounting platforms) through REST APIs, vendor connectors, file-based interfaces, and message queues.
• Establish evaluation and quality gates: define accuracy, precision, and exception-rate metrics for the extraction and matching steps, build test sets, and measure every release against them.
• Implement observability, logging, cost monitoring, and alerting so the client's team can operate the solution after handoff.
• Build the human-in-the-loop review experience for exceptions and low-confidence extractions.
• Apply security and governance controls appropriate to a client environment with an in-progress AI acceptable use policy: managed identity, private networking, secrets management, data residency, and PII handling.
• Produce architecture documentation, runbooks, and knowledge transfer materials. The client's team must be able to support this solution when the engagement ends.

Skills

Azure Foundry / Azure AI Foundry

Azure OpenAI Service

Azure AI Search

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

REST APIs

ETL pipelines

Python

C#

Azure Functions

Microsoft Fabric / Synapse

Tools

Azure Data Factory

Synapse

Fabric

Logic Apps

Service Bus

Event Grid

Job description

Description

• Do you buy your shirts with the sleeves already rolled up?
• Are you looking for something different than a traditional permanent position?
• Are you interested in interim or project-based positions that will allow you to showcase your expertise, gain valuable new experiences in different industries and drive results for our clients - all while offering the flexibility that you seek?

If you answer YES, Growth Operators is the place for you!

We are looking for an Azure AI Engineer to serve as the primary technical builder of a client solution, working alongside Growth Operators' IT leadership and the client's internal IT team.

Job Responsibilities

• Build and deploy the end-to-end order intake pipeline: document ingestion, extraction, enrichment, validation, exception handling, and posting to downstream systems.
• Implement document understanding and extraction against semi-structured and unstructured order documents (PDFs, emails, scanned forms, spreadsheets) with measurable accuracy targets.
• Design and build the retrieval layer, including indexing strategy, chunking, embeddings, hybrid and semantic ranking, and grounding against product catalog and customer master data.
• Develop and operationalize agents and orchestration logic in Microsoft Foundry (Azure AI Foundry), including tool and function calling, prompt design, and structured output contracts.
• Build the ETL and data movement layers that land raw and curated data in Azure Data Lake Storage and Blob Storage, and integrate with the client's in-flight data warehouse.
• Integrate with source and target systems (CRM, ERP, logistics, and accounting platforms) through REST APIs, vendor connectors, file-based interfaces, and message queues.
• Establish evaluation and quality gates: define accuracy, precision, and exception-rate metrics for the extraction and matching steps, build test sets, and measure every release against them.
• Implement observability, logging, cost monitoring, and alerting so the client's team can operate the solution after handoff.
• Build the human-in-the-loop review experience for exceptions and low-confidence extractions.
• Apply security and governance controls appropriate to a client environment with an in-progress AI acceptable use policy: managed identity, private networking, secrets management, data residency, and PII handling.
• Produce architecture documentation, runbooks, and knowledge transfer materials. The client's team must be able to support this solution when the engagement ends.

Required Qualifications and Core Competencies

• 2 to 3+ years designing and shipping AI or machine learning solutions on Microsoft Azure, including at least one production deployment you personally built and supported.
• Hands‑on experience with Microsoft Foundry / Azure AI Foundry (or Azure OpenAI Service): model deployment, prompt engineering, function and tool calling, structured outputs, and agent orchestration.
• Hands‑on experience with Azure AI Search: index design, vector and hybrid search, semantic ranking, indexers and skillsets, and retrieval quality tuning.
• Practical experience with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 and Blob Storage, including medallion or equivalent layered data organization, partitioning, and lifecycle management.
• Demonstrated systems integration experience: building and consuming REST APIs, webhooks, and authentication flows (OAuth 2.0, Microsoft Entra ID), against ERP, CRM, or similar business systems.
• Demonstrated ETL and data pipeline experience using Azure Data Factory, Synapse, Microsoft Fabric, or equivalent, including incremental loads, schema drift handling, and data quality checks.
• Strong Python (and/or C#) development skills, with real version control, code review, and testing discipline.
• Working knowledge of Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Service Bus, or Event Grid for event‑driven and serverless orchestration.
• Experience with document extraction using Azure Content Understanding, Azure AI Document Intelligence, or comparable OCR and form‑understanding tooling.
• Ability to work directly with non‑technical business stakeholders, translate a messy manual process into requirements, and push back constructively when a requested approach will not hold up.

Our Ideal Team Members:

• Thrive in fast‑paced, client‑facing environments and enjoy working on a variety of projects
• Have experience with multiple industries, M&A transactions or private equity‑backed businesses
• Are problem solvers who love tackling complex challenges with a hands‑on approach, and making a real impact

Position Type / Expected Hours of Work

• FLSA Status: Hourly, non-exempt
• Projects/interim work can either be part- or full-time, depending on the client's requests, with some flexibility regarding work schedule and location

Work Environment

• The work is performed remotely from home.
• This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as laptop computers and smartphones.

Benefits / Total Rewards

Growth Operators offers a competitive Total Rewards package focusing on your overall wellbeing. In addition to your hourly consultant project rate, we are pleased to offer health benefits, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401k, voluntary disability, life, accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity insurance, MN Paid Family and Medical Leave, paid time off programs, employee assistance programs, and additional perks.

About GROWTH OPERATORS®:

• Our purpose is to empower growth for our clients.
• Our vision is to be the premier Finance, Accounting, Human Resources, Transaction Advisory, and strategic IT firm for growing companies.
• Our mission is to take good companies and transform them into great companies by deploying our collective knowledge and expertise to propel our clients to higher levels of performance.

Growth Operators partners with middle‑market businesses, private equity, and PE‑sponsored organizations to accelerate sustainable growth by strengthening their finance, accounting, HR, and strategic IT capabilities. We believe technology isn't just infrastructure — it's an enterprise value‑creation lever. And in the middle market, it's chronically underleveraged.

Our team consists of experienced executives — not career consultants — including CFOs, Controllers, HR Leaders, CIOs, and Decision Intelligence practitioners with deep operational expertise across 35+ industries. We don't just advise; we embed ourselves into client teams as interim or fractional leaders, bringing the talent, intelligence, and strategy‑to‑execution leadership that drives real transformation.

For IT, that means aligning technology strategy directly to business outcomes, modernizing systems, enabling data‑driven decision‑making, and building scalable infrastructure that grows with the business.

Whether navigating transitions, optimizing performance, ensuring compliance, or architecting high‑impact technology environments, our hands‑on, roll‑up‑our‑sleeves approach creates measurable, sustainable value.

At Growth Operators, We Transform Good Companies into Great Companies.

You’ll join a trusted group of professionals at Growth Operators, committed to driving real impact with agility, confidence, and clarity. Come grow your career with us!

Growth Operators is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

For more information, view an informational video, listen to a podcast from our Co‑Founders, Rick Nordvold and Molly Hiller, or hear what our employees are talking about what it’s like to work for Growth Operators, visit https://growthoperators.com/careers/.