Principal AI Engineer — GenAI & LLM Lead

Ascend Learning; Gilbert (AZ); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life insurance

401(k) matching

Parental leave

Wellness resources

Charitable matching

On-site gym (Gilbert)

Job summary

Ascend Learning seeks a Principal AI Engineer to drive the evolution of AI-powered education solutions. You will lead design, development, and deployment of scalable AI/ML systems, including LLMs, and guide a cross‑functional team across NASM and Ascend ITS groups.

You will mentor junior engineers, shape AI strategy, ensure ethical, secure data practices, and partner with product and data teams to deliver impact.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, AI, or closely related field; equivalent professional experience considered.
• 6+ years in data and analytics with at least 3 years building analytical applications.
• Experience building and deploying LLMs, prompts, context management, and embedding techniques.
• Advanced understanding of ML and NLP, incl. LLMs, evaluation, optimization.
• Experience with Python, NLTK, HuggingFace, SQL, Snowflake.
• Experience with CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes, and MLflow or similar tools.
• Proven ability to translate ideas into scalable solutions.
• Strong leadership to guide junior AI engineers.
• Excellent communication skills and collaboration.
• Growth mindset and impact-driven.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, development, and deployment of scalable AI/ML solutions end-to-end.
• Build scalable, high-performance LLMOps pipelines.
• Design and co-own Generative AI/ML system architecture and processes.
• Stay current with AI advancements and drive innovation.
• Provide hands-on coding and mentor the team through delivery.
• Collaborate with product, data scientists, and software engineers.
• Ensure data privacy and security in pipelines.
• Define milestones and ensure timely delivery.
• Establish coding standards and documentation.
• Oversee design reviews across projects and promote best practices.
• Foster ethical AI development with fairness and transparency.
• Lead data processing pipelines and ensure data integrity.

Skills

LLM models

Prompt engineering

Context management

Embedding techniques

Python

NLP

HuggingFace

SQL

Snowflake

CI/CD

Docker

Kubernetes

MLflow

Leadership

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / AI

Tools

Azure ML

ML tooling

Job description

Ascend Learning seeks a Principal AI Engineer to drive the evolution of AI-powered education solutions. You will lead design, development, and deployment of scalable AI/ML systems, including LLMs, and guide a cross‑functional team across NASM and Ascend ITS groups.

You will mentor junior engineers, shape AI strategy, ensure ethical, secure data practices, and partner with product and data teams to deliver impact.