Senior AI Application Developer

Silgan Containers; Waukesha (WI); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Medical, dental, vision

401(k) with employer match

Paid time off + holidays

Tuition reimbursement

Continuing education support

Collaborative environment

Global organization with long-term own

Job summary

Silgan Containers is seeking a Senior AI Application Developer to build and operationalize AI-powered applications across production, supply chain, and enterprise systems. You will collaborate with data, security, and business teams to move AI from prototype to production with governance and reliability.

You will design and implement production-grade AI capabilities, integrate with ERP and data warehouses, and mentor teams on modern AI engineering practices in a global manufacturing environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a technical field.
• 5+ years of professional software development experience shipping production applications.
• Hands-on experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications and designing systems around model limitations.
• Experience designing AI agents with tool calls and orchestration patterns in production.

Responsibilities

• Architect and develop production-grade AI applications.
• Develop AI agents with multi-step reasoning, tool use, and function calling across enterprise systems.
• Build retrieval-backed AI capabilities and RAG pipelines connecting structured data and documents.
• Integrate AI with ERP platforms, data warehouses, and business applications.
• Mentor developers on AI engineering concepts and modern practices.

Skills

Python

C#/.NET

TypeScript

SQL

LLM-powered applications

REST APIs

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

Azure

AWS

LangGraph

LangChain

Semantic Kernel

LlamaIndex

GitHub Copilot

Job description

Why Join Silgan

At Silgan, employees are part of a financially strong, global packaging leader supporting many of the world’s most recognized consumer brands. Our Business Technology team is investing meaningfully in AI, creating an opportunity to apply emerging technology to real operational challenges across production, supply chain, quality, finance, and other enterprise functions.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation based on experience, skills, education, and market conditions
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and AD&D coverage
• Telemedicine access and supplemental employee benefit programs
• 401(k) with employer match after the eligibility period
• Generous paid time off plus company-paid holidays
• Tuition reimbursement and support for certifications and continuing education
• A collaborative environment with opportunities to influence Silgan’s evolving AI strategy
• The stability of a global, publicly traded organization with long-term career potential

What You’ll Do

As the Senior AI Application Developer, you will build and operationalize AI-powered applications while partnering with development, data, infrastructure, security, compliance, and business teams. You will help move AI capabilities from prototype through production with the controls, monitoring, and engineering discipline required in a complex enterprise environment.

Key Responsibilities

• AI Application Development
• Architect and develop production-grade AI applications, including agentic systems, intelligent search, automated reporting, and operational decision-support tools
• Build AI agents capable of multi-step reasoning, tool use, function calling, and workflow execution across enterprise systems
• Develop retrieval-backed AI capabilities and RAG pipelines that connect structured data, documents, technical content, and operational knowledge
• Build hybrid solutions that combine deterministic data processing with AI-generated analysis, narrative, and anomaly detection
• Enterprise Integration & Full-Stack Engineering
• Integrate AI capabilities with ERP platforms, data warehouses, production systems, and business applications using secure, reliable API and connector patterns
• Develop across a multi-language platform spanning Python, C#/.NET, and TypeScript and contribute across backend services, agent runtimes, and modern web interfaces
• Apply strong SQL and relational data skills to AI-driven analysis of large operational databases
• Design integrations with enterprise authentication and identity controls, including OAuth2/OIDC, JWT, Active Directory, and least-privilege access patterns
• Responsible AI, LLMOps & Production Operations
• Design and enforce AI guardrails including access controls, output validation, prompt safety, data protection, hallucination mitigation, and human approval gates
• Implement LLMOps practices such as prompt versioning, model and quality evaluation, token and cost optimization, monitoring, structured logging, and regression testing
• Manage phased deployments from proof of concept through pilot and full organizational rollout with appropriate scope and access controls
• Partner with security, compliance, and legal stakeholders to support responsible, auditable AI deployments and contribute to Silgan’s AI governance framework
• Team Capability & Collaboration
• Mentor and upskill developers on AI engineering concepts, frameworks, patterns, and modern AI-assisted development practices
• Evaluate emerging AI frameworks, model capabilities, orchestration patterns, and tooling and identify approaches that are genuinely useful for Silgan
• Translate complex AI concepts for business stakeholders and convert ambiguous business needs into clear technical requirements

What You Bring

The ideal candidate combines strong production software engineering experience with hands-on expertise building LLM-powered applications. You are comfortable working across the technology stack, understand where AI adds value and where deterministic approaches are more appropriate, and can build systems that are secure, reliable, maintainable, and auditable.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of professional software development experience with a track record of shipping production applications to real users at scale
• Hands-on experience building and deploying LLM-powered applications and designing systems around model limitations and reliability considerations
• Experience designing and deploying AI agents using tool calls, function calling, or similar orchestration patterns in production environments
• Professional-level development skills in at least two of Python, C#/.NET, and TypeScript, with the ability to work across all three
• Strong SQL skills including relational data modeling, query analysis, stored procedures, and performance awareness
• Experience building retrieval-backed AI features such as search, RAG, or structured data catalogs and evaluating retrieval quality
• Experience integrating enterprise services through REST APIs and modern authentication patterns
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms; Azure experience is preferred, with AWS experience also relevant

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, Semantic Kernel, Microsoft Agent Framework, LlamaIndex, or equivalent
• Experience developing Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers or clients
• Experience building end-to-end RAG pipelines, including chunking, embeddings, vector search, and retrieval evaluation
• Experience with modern web frontends and real-time or streaming AI interfaces using technologies such as React/Next.js, Blazor, Angular, SSE, SignalR, or WebSockets
• Experience implementing AI safety controls, output evaluation pipelines, and LLMOps monitoring or regression-testing practices
• Experience deploying and operating applications on Windows Server infrastructure and supporting CI/CD pipelines
• Experience in enterprise environments with formal security, compliance, change management, and audit requirements
• Manufacturing, supply chain, industrial operations, ERP, or process-intensive industry experience
• Experience mentoring developers or supporting cross-functional adoption of new AI/ML capabilities
• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Aider, or similar tools

Why This Role Stands Out

This is an opportunity to join Silgan’s AI transformation at an early and meaningful stage. You will work on production applications tied to real manufacturing and business challenges, influence the technical patterns and governance practices that shape future AI adoption, and help establish internal capability that can scale across the organization. The role combines hands‑on engineering with enterprise visibility and the opportunity to help define how AI is responsibly applied across a stable, global manufacturing company.

This page is specific to Silgan Containers, Silgan Closures, Silgan Plastics, Silgan Plastics Food Containers and Silgan Specialty packaging. We are a leading worldwide manufacturer of dispensing and specialty closures for food, beverage, health care, garden, home, personal care, fragrance and beauty products. We are also a leading manufacturer of metal containers in North America and Europe, and we are the largest manufacturer of metal food containers in North America with a unit volume market share in the United States in 2021 of slightly more than half of the market. Additionally, we are a leading manufacturer of custom designed plastic containers in North America for a variety of markets, including the personal care, food, health care and household and industrial chemical markets.