Staff Applied AI Engineer

Insight Global; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 207,000 - 258,000; Full time

Job summary

Insight Global is seeking an entrepreneurial, hands-on Staff AI Engineer to build and scale Applied AI Solutions for an automotive customer in the electric vehicle space. You will design, build, and operate production-grade systems at the forefront of generative AI, partnering with leaders across the company to unlock transformative business value.

You will set technical direction, own complex domains, and mentor engineers while collaborating with Operations, Product, Sales, Customer Service,

Qualifications

• Deep knowledge in AI/ML with hands-on building and deploying solutions.
• Ability to translate ambiguous problems into robust AI products.
• Experience defining architectures that leverage multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and hands-on development of AI applications and services.
• Define long-term architecture and engineering standards for AI systems.
• Partner with sponsors to translate opportunities into roadmaps and products.
• Collaborate with legal, security, and governance across the AI lifecycle.
• Mentor engineers, lead reviews, and improve code quality and cost/performance.
• Establish monitoring, SLOs, and guardrails for AI workloads.

Skills

AI/ML hands-on

Architectural leadership

Security & compliance

Stakeholder management

Communication

Lifelong learning

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS

Tools

LLM stacks

Retrieval-augmented generation

Embeddings/Vector search

Evaluation frameworks

Job description

Job Description

Insight Global is seeking an entrepreneurial, hands‑on senior individual contributor to build and scale Applied AI Solutions for an automotive customer in the electric vehicle space. As a Staff AI Engineer, you will design, build, and operate production‑grade systems at the forefront of generative AI, partnering with leaders across the company to unlock transformative business value. You will set technical direction, own complex domains, and raise the engineering bar through architectural leadership, operational excellence, and pragmatic innovation with language models and machine learning. You will work closely with Operations (Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Procurement, Quality), Product, Sales, Customer Service, Finance, HR, and other internal partners to align technical solutions to measurable enterprise outcomes.

Responsibilities

Lead the technical design and hands‑on development of prioritized AI applications, services, and platforms leveraging state‑of‑the‑art LLM app stacks, retrieval‑augmented generation, evaluation frameworks, and scalable serving.

Define long‑term architecture and engineering standards for Applied AI systems to maximize reuse, reliability, and impact across multiple product areas.

Partner with business sponsors to translate high‑value opportunities into roadmaps and shipped products with clear success metrics and measurable outcomes.

Build a holistic view of AI investments by collaborating with adjacent engineering groups implementing AI in their domains, aligning patterns, reusing components, and avoiding duplication.

Drive continuous improvement in AI methodologies and best practices; evaluate emerging capabilities and land them as secure, production‑grade systems.

Collaborate with Legal, Compliance, Risk, Audit, and Security to embed robust governance, privacy, security, safety, and reporting practices across the AI lifecycle.

Champion AI literacy, enablement, and adoption through demos, guidance, and technical leadership across the org.

Mentor engineers across levels; lead design reviews; improve code quality, reliability, observability, and cost/performance of AI workloads.

Establish rigorous evaluation, guardrails, and monitoring practices; instrument offline and online metrics to ensure quality, safety, and SLOs.

Optimize latency, throughput, and cost at scale; guide make/buy decisions and vendor integrations where appropriate.

Salary ranges based on experience: $206,500.00 - $258,100.00

We are a company committed to creating diverse and inclusive environments where people can bring their full, authentic selves to work every day. We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer that believes everyone matters. Qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment regardless of their race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, ancestry, genetic factors, age, disability, protected veteran status, military or uniformed service member status, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or recruiting process, please send a request to [e-mail] learn more about how we collect, keep, and process your private information, please review Insight Global's Workforce Privacy Policy: https://insightglobal.com/workforce-privacy-policy/.

Skills and Requirements

• BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8-10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a proven track record delivering complex, production‑ready systems in enterprise environments.
• Deep technical knowledge in AI/ML, with hands‑on experience building and deploying solutions using language models, retrieval/grounding, embeddings/vector search, and evaluation.
• Demonstrated ability to translate ambiguous business problems into robust AI products with measurable business impact.
• Experience defining and evolving architectures, standards, and platforms that create leverage across multiple teams.
• Strong familiarity with security, privacy, compliance, safety, and auditability for enterprise AI systems.
• Excellence in communication and stakeholder management; able to influence and align across diverse teams.
• Proven curiosity and mental agility to learn and apply new technologies through hands‑on development and continuous learning.