Sr. Systems Engineer - AI

Dairy Farmers of America; Kansas City (KS); On-site; USD 98,000 - 139,000; Full time

Job summary

Dairy Farmers of America in the United States is seeking a senior technical leader for IT Solutions Delivery to deploy, operate, and continuously improve production AI-enabled platforms and services supporting critical business applications.

You will partner with application teams, platform engineering, and IT operations to ensure AI services are production-ready, scalable, and aligned to enterprise standards, while driving reliability, cost efficiency, and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field.
• 8+ years in IT, cloud/platform engineering, DevOps, or SRE.
• Experience deploying AI/ML platforms in production.
• Designing CI/CD pipelines and IaC.
• Collaborating with cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Deploy AI/ML solutions into production using repeatable release processes.
• Build and maintain automated pipelines across development, testing, production.
• Ensure AI services meet deployment/configuration/change standards.
• Own day-to-day operations of AI-enabled platforms.
• Establish and enforce SRE practices including HA, capacity planning, auto-scaling, redundancy and failover.
• Continuously optimize platform performance and cost.
• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting aligned to ITOM.
• Define and track service health and data quality metrics.
• Provide production support including RCA and corrective actions.
• Develop runbooks and support procedures.
• Partner with operations and service desk for support readiness.
• Integrate AI services into enterprise ecosystems.
• Collaborate to ensure services are operationalized and monitored.
• Ensure AI components are enterprise services.
• Manage lifecycle including versioning and controlled releases.
• Identify opportunities to automate operations.
• Serve as SME in AI platform operations.
• Lead or support major incidents and complex challenges.
• Drive adoption of standardized operational practices.
• Provide guidance to project teams for production-ready solutions.

Skills

AI/ML operations

CI/CD pipelines

SRE practices

Automation scripting

Cross-functional collaboration

English proficiency

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/IT

8+ years IT/DevOps/SRE

Tools

Cloud platforms

Monitoring tools

Automation tooling

Job description

Serve as a senior-level technical leader within IT Solutions Delivery, responsible for deploying, operating, and continuously improving production AI-enabled platforms and services that support critical business applications.

This role ensures that AI/ML capabilities are delivered into production environments using the same operational rigor, reliability standards, and support models as enterprise IT infrastructure, enabling consistent uptime, performance, and scalability. The engineer partners closely with application teams, platform engineering, and IT operations to ensure AI services are production-ready, supportable, and aligned to enterprise operational standards.

Job Duties And Responsibilities

• Deploy AI/ML solutions into enterprise production environments using repeatable, low-risk release processes


• Build and maintain automated pipelines that support solution delivery across development, testing, and production


• Ensure all AI services meet enterprise standards for deployment, configuration, and change management


• Own day-to-day operations of AI-enabled platforms, ensuring availability, reliability, and performance of business-facing services


• Establish and enforce site reliability engineering (SRE) practices, including high availability and fault tolerance, capacity planning and auto-scaling, and redundancy and failover strategies


• Continuously optimize platform performance, resource utilization, and cost efficiency


• Implement and maintain monitoring, logging, and alerting aligned to enterprise ITOM practices


• Define and track service health, performance, and data quality metrics for AI-enabled services


• Configure proactive alerting for degradations or anomalies and integrate with enterprise event management platforms


• Develop and maintain operational dashboards and visibility tools for ongoing service assurance


• Provide production support for AI-enabled services, including incident triage and resolution, performing root cause analysis (RCA), and implementing corrective and preventative actions


• Develop and maintain runbooks and support procedures to enable consistent issue resolution


• Partner with operations and service desk teams to ensure support readiness and knowledge transfer


• Integrate AI services into enterprise application and infrastructure ecosystems, ensuring compatibility with existing platforms


• Collaborate with solution delivery, infrastructure, and application teams to ensure services are fully operationalized, properly monitored, and supportable through standard IT processes


• Ensure AI components behave as first-class enterprise services within the broader application landscape


• Ensure all AI services are deployed and operated in alignment with enterprise security, compliance, and data protection standards


• Manage the full operational lifecycle of AI-enabled services, including versioning and controlled releases, performance tuning and optimization, and continuous improvement of deployment and support processes


• Identify opportunities to automate and standardize platform operations to improve efficiency and reliability


• Serve as a subject matter expert in AI platform operations


• Lead or support resolution of major incidents and complex operational challenges


• Drive adoption of standardized operational practices, including runbooks, and reliability engineering


• Provide guidance to project teams to ensure solutions are designed for production support from day one

Education And Experience

• Undergraduate degree in computer science, information technology, or related curriculum (or equivalent combination of experience and education)


• 8 or more years of information technology, cloud or platform engineering, DevOps, site reliability engineering (SRE), infrastructure engineering, application operations, or related experience that includes experience:
  
  
  
  • supporting AI/ML platforms, machine learning operations (MLOps), AI-enabled applications, large-scale data platforms, or other advanced analytics environments in production
  
  
  • deploying, monitoring, and supporting business-critical applications in cloud-based and hybrid enterprise environments
  
  
  • designing and managing CI/CD pipelines, automated deployment processes, and infrastructure-as-code solutions
  
  
  • partnering with application development, infrastructure, security, and operations teams to operationalize new technologies and services
  
  
  • serving as a technical lead, senior engineer, or escalation point for complex production issues
  
  
  
  


• Certification and/or License - may be required during course of employment

Knowledge, Skills, And Abilities

• Deep understanding of managing supported systems in a large-scale environment


• Solid understanding of AI/ML operational practices, including model deployment, model monitoring, inference services, version management, and AI platform lifecycle management


• Strong understanding of backup technologies and cloud technologies


• Strong scripting and automation skills


• Strong collaboration skills with application development, platform engineering, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and service desk teams


• Strong problem solving and analytical skills with the ability to quickly isolate problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions; able to perform root cause analysis and implement sustainable corrective and preventive actions


• Able to deploy and maintain highly available, scalable, and supportable AI-enabled services in production environments


• Able to automate operational processes, platform provisioning, deployments, monitoring, and recovery activities


• Able to serve as the senior technical escalation point for critical incidents and complex operational challenges


• Able to influence teams and drive adoption of enterprise operational standards and best practices


• Able to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders


• Able to prioritize multiple operational demands in fast-paced production environments


• Able to work independently with limited direction while maintaining accountability for enterprise-critical service


• Must be able to read, write and speak English

An Equal Opportunity Employer including Disabled/Veterans

$98000-$139000/Annually