Senior AI Engineer

William Blair - Chicago, IL

Full-time - Mid Level

Chicago, IL

Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities

About the position

The Senior AI Engineer will be part of a high-performing Business & Technology team at William Blair, focusing on building end-to-end AI solutions that leverage both proprietary and third-party data sources. This role involves collaborating with various stakeholders, including Portfolio Managers and Analysts, to enhance business growth and productivity through innovative data-driven insights and solutions.

Responsibilities

• Execute and complete AI initiatives and projects, balancing internal development with vendor solutions.
• Develop and deploy robust data architectures (data lake, data warehouse, etc.) to handle large-scale datasets, ensuring data quality and integrity.
• Develop and implement Microservices architecture to facilitate the scalable and efficient management of data services.
• Leverage and refine open-source generative AI models to solve advanced data augmentation and analytics problems.
• Manage and optimize data processing workflows, ensuring timely and accurate data availability.
• Optimize data retrieval processes through database tuning and query optimization.
• Analyze structured and unstructured data to understand customer interactions with products and services.
• Perform design, analysis, and interpretation of projects from data requirement gathering to modeling and recommendations.
• Collaborate with engineers, analysts, and business teams to understand data requirements and deliver scalable solutions.
• Work with IT, security, and compliance teams to ensure adherence to data management and protection standards.
• Manage and optimize cloud-based data solutions, preferably Azure.
• Ensure robustness, scalability, and sustainability of data infrastructure in the cloud environment.
• Maintain comprehensive documentation of data models, pipelines, and ETL processes.

Requirements

• Master's degree in computer science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience as a data engineer or machine learning engineer, with a proven track record in developing ETL processes and data pipeline architecture.
• Highly proficient in Python, with strong problem-solving skills in data processing and manipulation.
• Hands-on experience with API utilization, development, and management.
• Proficient in working with LLMs and extensive experience in prompt engineering.
• Experienced in machine learning and deep learning algorithms, with skills in TensorFlow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn.
• Expertise in designing and implementing efficient data models for ETL processes and data analytics.
• Extensive experience managing Azure cloud data technologies (Synapse, Databricks, ADF, Azure Data Lake).
• Practical experience with event-driven architecture and real-time data processing.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Self-starter with the ability to initiate and drive projects.
• Experience with K8s, Docker, SQL, and Spark for big data handling.
• A record of continuous learning in data engineering, machine learning, and cloud technologies.
• Certifications in Azure Data Engineering, Azure Machine Learning, Spark, or relevant technologies.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience shipping code into production.
• Demonstrable expertise in leveraging data to deliver business value and present insights to business audiences.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance bonuses.
• Comprehensive health insurance coverage.
• 401(k) retirement savings plan with company matching contributions.
• Flexible work hours and remote work options.
• Professional development opportunities and continuous learning support.