Sr AI Engineer - OCR

EXL; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

EXL seeks an experienced AI/OCR Engineer to design and optimize OCR and document intelligence solutions, leveraging traditional OCR, cloud services, and LLMs. You will build extraction pipelines for complex documents and drive data quality through validation and continuous improvement.

The role requires strong Python/SQL skills, hands-on OCR experience, and proven ability to collaborate with stakeholders across technical and non-technical teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field.
• 5+ years in AI/ML, OCR, Document Processing, Data Engineering, or related domains.
• Hands-on experience with OCR technologies.
• LLM-based document extraction solutions.
• Experience processing low-quality scans, faxes, and artefacts.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize OCR and Document Intelligence solutions using traditional OCR tools, cloud-native services, and LLMs.
• Build and enhance document extraction pipelines for structured and unstructured documents.
• Evaluate OCR technologies to identify best solution for business needs.
• Develop processes to improve extraction accuracy and data quality.

Skills

Communication with stakeholders

Cross-functional collaboration

Technical leadership

End-to-end ownership

Growth mindset

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science/Engineering/Data Science

Tools

Python

SQL

GCP

Tesseract

LLMs

Cloud OCR services

Document Intelligence

Job description

We are looking for 5+ years of relevant experience and: Strong OCR experience across LLMs, cloud tools, and traditional tools such as Tesseract Experience with handwriting, poor-quality faxes, image artifacts, and database validation Understanding of current tool/data limitations and what is required to improve quality Strong Python and SQL; familiarity with GCP Experience developing, deploying, and maintaining production applications Strong business framing, stakeholder communication, and technical judgment Demonstrated end-to-end ownership of ambiguous projects, with limited supervision An outcome-oriented mindset focused on solving the business problem, not just executing a task Successful candidates should be able to work across technical and nontechnical teams, explain trade-offs, gain stakeholder buy-in, and operate with a growth mindset. They will work with another teammate and leverage previous work rather than start from scratch. If they are technically great, but not good with business trade offs & stakeholder communications, they aren't a good fit.

AI & OCR Solution Development

• Design, develop, and optimize OCR and Document Intelligence solutions using traditional OCR tools, cloud-native services, and Large Language Models (LLMs).
• Build and enhance document extraction pipelines for structured and unstructured documents, including handwritten forms, poor-quality faxes, scanned images, and complex business documents.
• Evaluate and compare OCR technologies such as Tesseract, cloud OCR services, and LLM-based extraction approaches to identify the best solution for business needs.
• Develop processes to improve extraction accuracy and data quality through validation, feedback loops, and continuous model optimization.

Data Quality & Validation

• Design automated validation frameworks to compare extracted data against databases and business rules.
• Analyze OCR failures and identify root causes related to image quality, handwriting recognition, document layouts, and extraction limitations.
• Develop strategies to improve data extraction accuracy and downstream business outcomes.

Application Development & Deployment

• Develop, deploy, and maintain scalable production applications and APIs supporting document processing workflows.
• Build end-to-end solutions using Python, SQL, and cloud technologies.
• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and performance optimization for production workloads.
• Collaborate with platform and engineering teams to ensure reliability, security, and scalability.

Technical Leadership

• Provide technical guidance on architecture decisions, tool selection, and implementation approaches.
• Assess emerging technologies in OCR, Generative AI, and Document Intelligence.
• Drive technical excellence through best practices, code reviews, testing, and documentation.
• Leverage existing solutions and prior work to accelerate delivery rather than rebuilding from scratch.

Business & Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner closely with business stakeholders to understand requirements, priorities, and success metrics.
• Translate business challenges into technical solutions that deliver measurable value.
• Clearly communicate technical trade-offs, risks, assumptions, and recommendations to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Build consensus and gain stakeholder buy-in for proposed approaches.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in AI/ML, OCR, Document Processing, Data Engineering, or related domains.
• Hands-on experience with OCR technologies including:
• LLM-based document extraction solutions
• Experience processing:
• Low-quality scans
• Faxes
• Images with artifacts and distortions
• Strong proficiency in Python and SQL.
• Experience with cloud platforms, preferably Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Experience developing, deploying, and supporting production-grade applications.
• Experience developing, deploying, and supporting production-grade applications.
• Strong understanding of data validation, data quality, and document extraction workflows.
• Experience integrating AI/ML solutions into business processes.