AI/ML Engineer

Location: Chicago, IL 
Duration: 3–6 Months Contract-to-Hire
Experience: 5+ Years

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced Sr. AI/ML Engineer to design, build, and deploy scalable AI/ML solutions, including traditional machine learning models and LLM-powered applications. The ideal candidate will have strong hands-on experience with RAG pipelines, agentic AI workflows, Python, vector databases, MLOps, and cloud deployments.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and deploy production-ready AI/ML and LLM solutions.
• Build RAG pipelines, embedding workflows, vector search, and agentic AI systems.
• Develop and optimize LLM orchestration and prompt strategies.
• Deploy and serve models using tools such as FastAPI and MLflow.
• Build scalable MLOps, CI/CD, monitoring, and model lifecycle workflows.
• Optimize AI systems for performance, scalability, latency, and cost.
• Develop reliable data pipelines with proper validation and reproducibility.
• Evaluate ML/LLM performance and implement appropriate guardrails and monitoring.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams and contribute to AI architecture decisions.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in ML Engineering, Applied AI, or a related field.
• Strong hands-on Python development experience.
• Proven experience deploying ML models into production.
• Hands-on experience building LLM applications, RAG systems, and agentic workflows.
• Experience with vector databases, embeddings, and semantic/vector search.
• Experience with LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar frameworks.
• Experience with FastAPI, MLflow, or similar model-serving/API technologies.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD, containerization, MLOps, and cloud deployments.
• Understanding of ML and LLM evaluation, monitoring, and performance optimization.

Preferred

Experience with AI platforms, foundation-model fine-tuning, LLM evaluation/monitoring tools, regulated environments, and large-scale inference optimization is a plus.