Senior Azure AI Foundry Engineer

Interon IT Solutions; Detroit (MI); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking an experienced Azure AI Foundry Engineer to design, develop, and deploy enterprise-grade generative AI solutions on the Microsoft Azure platform.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience with Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, AI agents, Python, and cloud-native development. Hybrid work arrangement in Lansing/Detroit, MI, with W2 employment and 8+ years of experience expected.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software/data/AI development experience required.
• Experience with Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI deployments.
• Strong background in RAG-based applications and AI safety considerations.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop generative AI apps using Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI.
• Implement Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Azure AI Search and embeddings.
• Build AI agents capable of API, DB, and document interactions.
• Create prompts, system instructions, and multi-step agent workflows.
• Develop backend AI services using Python, FastAPI or Flask.
• Integrate data from Azure Data Lake, Storage, SQL, SharePoint, enterprise apps.
• Develop ingestion, indexing, retrieval, and response-generation pipelines.
• Ensure safety, grounding, latency, and performance of AI apps.

Skills

Azure AI Foundry

Azure OpenAI

Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Python

API development

LLM evaluation

Prompt engineering

Azure services

CI/CD

DevOps tooling

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

Docker

FastAPI/Flask

Azure Data Lake/Blob

AKS

Job description

Client: Cognizant

Employment Type: W2

Experience: 8+ Years

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced Azure AI Foundry Engineer to design, develop, and deploy enterprise-grade generative AI solutions on the Microsoft Azure platform. The ideal candidate should have strong experience with Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, AI agents, Python, and cloud-native application development.

Job Title: Azure AI Foundry Engineer

Location: Lansing/Detroit, Michigan (Hybrid)

Client: Cognizant

Employment Type: W2

Experience: 8+ Years

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced Azure AI Foundry Engineer to design, develop, and deploy enterprise-grade generative AI solutions on the Microsoft Azure platform. The ideal candidate should have strong experience with Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, AI agents, Python, and cloud-native application development.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and develop generative AI applications using Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI.
• Build Retrieval-Augmented Generation solutions using Azure AI Search, vector databases, embeddings, and enterprise data sources.
• Develop AI agents capable of interacting with APIs, databases, documents, and other business systems.
• Design prompt workflows, system instructions, tool-calling processes, and multi-step agent workflows.
• Develop backend AI services and APIs using Python, FastAPI, Flask, or similar frameworks.
• Integrate structured and unstructured data from Azure Data Lake, Blob Storage, SQL databases, SharePoint, and enterprise applications.
• Implement document ingestion, chunking, embedding, indexing, retrieval, and response-generation pipelines.
• Evaluate AI applications for response accuracy, relevance, groundedness, safety, latency, and overall performance.
• Implement responsible AI controls, content filtering, prompt-injection protection, access controls, and data-security standards.
• Monitor AI applications using Azure Monitor, Application Insights, logging, tracing, and Foundry observability capabilities.
• Deploy and manage AI solutions using Azure Functions, Azure App Service, Azure Container Apps, AKS, or similar Azure services.
• Build automated CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.
• Collaborate with data engineers, data scientists, architects, business analysts, and product teams.
• Troubleshoot issues related to model responses, data retrieval, integrations, application performance, and cloud deployment.
• Prepare technical design documents, architecture diagrams, deployment guides, and operational documentation.

Required Skills

• 6+ years of overall software engineering, data engineering, cloud, or AI development experience.
• Strong hands-on experience with Azure AI Foundry or Microsoft Foundry.
• Experience with Azure OpenAI models, embeddings, chat completions, and model deployments.
• Strong experience developing RAG-based applications.
• Hands-on experience with Azure AI Search, vector search, semantic search, and hybrid search.
• Strong programming experience with Python.
• Experience developing REST APIs using FastAPI, Flask, or similar frameworks.
• Experience with prompt engineering, function calling, tool calling, and AI agent development.
• Understanding of LLM evaluation, hallucination reduction, groundedness, responsible AI, and content safety.
• Experience with Azure services such as Blob Storage, Data Lake, Key Vault, Functions, App Service, Container Apps, AKS, and Application Insights.
• Experience working with SQL, NoSQL, document databases, or vector databases.
• Experience with Git, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Docker, and CI/CD processes.