Innovation AI Developer

Kirkland & Ellis; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 177,000 - 218,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive healthcare

Paid time off

Retirement benefits

Learning and development opportunities

Job summary

Kirkland & Ellis is seeking an Innovation AI Developer to design and deploy AI solutions that enhance legal services. The role involves collaborating with attorneys and business leaders to address operational challenges with AI technologies. Ideal candidates have over 7 years of experience in AI application deployment, strong Python skills, and familiarity with cloud architectures like Azure. This position includes benefits and competitive compensation based on location, ranging from $177,000 to $218,000.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in professional services, legal, or technical environments.
• Experience building and deploying AI applications, particularly in Azure.
• Familiarity with RAG pipelines and vector databases.

Responsibilities

• Design and deploy AI applications to transform service delivery.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to leverage AI for operational challenges.
• Maintain AI system evaluation frameworks and ensure compliance.

Skills

Python development

AI application deployment

Cloud architecture

Stakeholder communication

AI use case evaluation

Security and governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field

Tools

Azure

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenAI

LangChain

Job description

About Kirkland & Ellis

At Kirkland & Ellis, we don’t just meet the standard for legal excellence — we set it. Our culture is built on teamwork, ingenuity and an unwavering commitment to continuous growth. We tackle the most sophisticated legal challenges with bold ideas and innovative solutions, powered by the exceptional experience and ambition of our 7,000+ people, including 4,000+ attorneys, across 23 offices worldwide. Our dedicated professionals share our lawyers’ commitment to excellence and show up each day to do meaningful work that helps drive global business, investment and innovation forward.

What You’ll Do

As an Innovation AI Developer at Kirkland & Ellis, you will play a pivotal role on our Innovation Engineering team — designing and deploying intelligent, secure, and scalable AI applications that transform how we deliver legal services and operate our business. In this role, you’ll partner closely with attorneys, business leaders, data scientists, and infrastructure teams to translate nuanced legal and operational challenges into practical AI solutions with measurable outcomes. From early‑stage use‑case discovery through production deployment and monitoring, you’ll work across the full AI lifecycle—leveraging large language models (LLMs), retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG), classical machine learning, and modern cloud architectures to drive efficiency, quality, and informed decision‑making. This is an opportunity to shape enterprise‑grade AI capabilities at one of the world’s leading law firms, working at the intersection of advanced engineering and high‑impact legal work.

• AI Solution Architecture & Development – Collaborate with legal and business stakeholders to identify high‑value AI use cases, define measurable success criteria (e.g., efficiency, quality, risk reduction), and architect scalable solutions using Python and modern AI frameworks such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangChain, and LangFlow.
• Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) & Intelligent Systems – Design, build, and maintain RAG pipelines using vector databases and knowledge graph solutions. Develop AI agents that automate multi‑step workflows and enable sophisticated task orchestration.
• Reusable Engineering & Scalable Innovation – Create reusable libraries, patterns, and documentation that support long‑term innovation and maintainability across the firm’s AI ecosystem.
• Evaluation & Model Governance – Design and maintain LLM evaluation frameworks to measure accuracy, robustness, safety, and alignment to use‑case objectives. Ensure AI systems meet firm security, privacy, and governance standards.
• Production Deployment & Infrastructure Enablement – Support continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) workflows, containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes) to ensure production readiness. Partner with infrastructure and security teams to support hybrid cloud and on‑premise deployments in sensitive data environments.
• Stakeholder Partnership & AI Enablement – Serve as a subject‑matter resource for attorneys and business teams, advising on prompt engineering, model selection, and architecture decisions. Support pilot implementations, user training, and feedback loops to drive adoption and measurable impact.
• Emerging Technology & Strategy Contribution – Evaluate new tools, open‑source libraries, and vendor platforms to inform firm AI strategy. Contribute to internal education and thought leadership on AI best practices.

What You’ll Bring

• Education – Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field preferred.
• Experience – 7+ years of experience in professional services, legal, or technical environments, with demonstrated hands‑on experience building and deploying AI applications.
• AI Engineering Expertise – Strong Python development skills and experience designing and implementing RAG pipelines, working with vector databases (e.g., Pinecone), and building AI agents and multi‑service AI architectures—particularly within Azure environments.
• Cloud & DevOps Proficiency – Familiarity with Azure services (e.g., Cognitive Search, Cosmos DB, AI Studio), as well as Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD practices that support scalable, production‑ready deployments.
• Evaluation & Data Integration – Experience designing and maintaining LLM evaluation frameworks (e.g., Promptfoo, OpenAI Evals, LangSmith) and integrating structured and unstructured data sources into AI systems.
• Security & Governance Awareness – Experience operating within environments that require strict adherence to security, privacy, and governance standards for sensitive data.
• Business Acumen & Communication – Proven ability to conduct stakeholder discovery, quantify return on investment (ROI), and translate ambiguous challenges into clearly defined AI requirements. Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non‑technical audiences.
• Legal Domain Exposure (Preferred) – Experience supporting legal use cases such as due diligence, contract review, or legal research, and prior law firm experience.

If you’re motivated to design intelligent systems that elevate how legal services are delivered—while shaping the future of AI within a high‑performing, collaborative environment—we’d love to hear from you.

Compensation

The base salary range below represents the low and high end of the salary range for this position in Chicago and New York. This range may differ based on your geographic location and cost of living considerations. At Kirkland & Ellis, we consider compensation more than just a base salary. We offer an exceptional range of flexible benefits including comprehensive healthcare, paid time off, and retirement. We also offer personal support and tailored learning and development opportunities all designed to help you realize your full potential both in life and at work.

Compensation Range

Chicago: $177,000 – $197,000

New York: $177,000 – $218,000

Equal Employment Opportunity

All employment decisions, including the recruiting, hiring, placement, training availability, promotion, compensation, evaluation, disciplinary actions, and termination of employment (if necessary) are made without regard to the employee’s race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy or childbirth, personal appearance, family responsibilities, sexual orientation or preference, gender identity, political affiliation, source of income, place of residence, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military veteran status, unfavorable discharge from military service, physical or mental disability, or on any other basis prohibited by applicable law.