About the job

Role: Principal AI Platform Engineer – LLM & Agentic Systems

Location: Dallas, TX | Fort Worth, TX | San Antonio, TX | Talladega, AL — Onsite

Employment Type: 6+ Month Contract, Temp-to-Perm

Status: Accepting Candidates

Travel Requirements: Must be willing to travel domestically 10–20%.

About the Role

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal AI Platform Engineer to design, develop, and deploy production-ready AI platforms and LLM-powered developer tools. The ideal candidate will have strong software engineering expertise, hands-on experience deploying open-weight language models on self-managed infrastructure, and a solid background in agentic AI, LLM orchestration, and enterprise systems integration.

This role requires an engineer who can independently deliver complex technical solutions and integrate AI capabilities into real-world production environments.

Key Responsibilities

Design, build, and maintain scalable AI platforms and LLM-powered applications for production use.
Develop AI coding assistants and developer tools using large language models, code retrieval, context management, and toolchain integration.
Deploy, operate, and optimize open-weight LLMs on self-managed infrastructure.
Implement LLM orchestration, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tool calling, and evaluation frameworks.
Build and integrate MCP servers, agent-based workflows, and AI-to-system connectors for production users.
Develop reliable backend services and integrations across APIs, event streams, data pipelines, and identity systems.
Write production-quality code using Python and at least one additional language, such as Go, Rust, or TypeScript.
Evaluate AI system performance, reliability, and functionality to ensure production readiness.
Collaborate with engineering and platform teams to deliver scalable, secure, and maintainable AI solutions.
Independently drive complex engineering initiatives from design through deployment and ongoing support.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of relevant experience, master’s degree with 5+ years, or PhD with 3+ years of relevant experience.
Strong hands-on software engineering experience with Python and at least one of Go, Rust, or TypeScript.
Proven experience deploying and operating open-weight LLMs on self-managed infrastructure in production environments.
Experience developing AI coding assistants, LLM-based developer tools, or similar engineering productivity solutions.
Hands-on expertise in code retrieval, context management, and developer toolchain integration.
Practical experience with LLM orchestration, RAG, tool calling, and model or application evaluation.
Experience delivering MCP servers, tool-calling integrations, or equivalent agent-to-system connectors to production users.
Strong systems integration experience across APIs, event-driven architectures, data pipelines, and identity management.
Demonstrated ability to independently deliver complex technical projects with minimal supervision.
Willingness to work onsite at one of the listed locations and travel domestically 10–20%.

Compensation

Pay Rate: $60–$70/hour (W-2).
Candidates with higher rate expectations may also be considered.

Job description