AI Engineer

Who We Are

World Automotive Group operates two high-volume dealerships in the Chicago metro area, World Kia Joliet and World Hyundai Matteson. We are not a typical car dealership. We are actively building a suite of proprietary AI-powered tools, SaaS products, and autonomous agent systems that are changing how automotive retail operates, starting with our own stores and expanding outward.

We have a working product ecosystem already in development. You are not walking into a whiteboard conversation. You are walking into an active build environment with real users, real dealership data, and real deadlines.

The Role

We are looking for an AI Engineer who can do two things extremely well: build intelligent tools and products powered by large language models, and design and deploy agent-based workflows that automate dealership operations end to end.

This is an equal split between product development and automation. Some days you are building an AI-powered deal analysis tool for a finance manager. Other days you are mapping a workflow, identifying a manual bottleneck in the BDC or service lane, and deploying an autonomous agent that eliminates it. You need to be genuinely skilled in both areas, not just familiar with them.

This position reports directly to ownership and operates with a high degree of autonomy. That is a feature, not a risk. If you need multiple layers of approval to do your best work, this is not the right environment.

What You Will Build

• AI-powered dealership tools for sales, F&I, BDC, and service departments
• LLM-driven chat agents for customer-facing and internal applications
• Autonomous agent workflows connecting CRM systems, DMS platforms, and third-party APIs using platforms like n8n, Make, or Zapier
• OpenClaw and similar deployments integrated with Claude or GPT-class models to run background tasks, automate communications, and execute multi-step operations without manual intervention
• Prompt engineering architectures, system prompts, and agent logic for multi-step reasoning tasks
• SaaS-ready products designed to scale beyond our own stores to dealers nationwide

Real-World Tools You Should Know

We work across a range of platforms and expect fluency, not just familiarity, with the following categories:

AI Agent & Coding Environments

Claude Code, OpenClaw, Cursor, Windsurf, Lovable, or similar agentic runtimes. You should know how to deploy these in a business setting, configure them securely, and let them execute real work without babysitting every step.

LLM APIs & Frameworks

Anthropic Claude API, OpenAI GPT API, LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, AutoGen, or similar. You understand context management, token economics, and how to build agents that reason across multiple steps.

Workflow Automation

n8n (self-hosted preferred), Make.com, Zapier, or equivalent. You know how to wire systems together, handle webhooks, manage conditional logic, and build automations that actually hold up in production.

Voice & Telephony

Experience with AI voice agent platforms (Bland, Vapi, Retell, ElevenLabs, or similar) is a meaningful plus. Dealership phone traffic is high volume and ripe for intelligent automation.

Vector Databases & RAG

Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, or similar. You know how to build retrieval systems that give agents accurate, grounded context from real business data.

Frontend Development

React preferred. You can build functional, professional tool interfaces without needing a separate front-end developer for every project.

What We Are Looking For

Required:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, AI/ML, or a closely related technical field
• Hands-on experience building with LLM APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI, or similar)
• Demonstrated ability to design and deploy AI agents and multi-step automated workflows in a real production environment
• Experience with autonomous agent platforms such as OpenClaw, Claude Code, Cursor, or similar local-first agent runtimes, including secure deployment and configuration
• Proficiency in Python and JavaScript/TypeScript
• Strong understanding of prompt engineering, context management, and agent orchestration frameworks
• Ability to work independently, prioritize without being told, and ship working products on a timeline

Strongly Preferred:

• Experience with RAG architectures and vector databases
• Hands-on experience with n8n, Make, or Zapier in a business workflow context
• Front-end development skills sufficient to build functional tool interfaces
• Prior work in a startup, small team, or founder-led environment where you wore multiple hats

Nice to Have:

• Automotive industry or dealership system knowledge
• Experience building or contributing to a SaaS product
• Voice AI or telephony integration experience
• Familiarity with Supabase, Firebase, or similar backend-as-a-service platforms

What This Is Not

This is not a data science role. You will not spend your days building models from scratch or running statistical analyses. This is applied AI engineering. You build things that work, deploy them where real people use them, and iterate based on results.

It is also not a role for someone who has only used these tools recreationally. We move fast, the problems are real, and the bar for quality is high. If you thrive on seeing your work used by actual humans the same week you build it, you will like it here.

What You Get

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience
• Performance bonus tied to tool delivery and measurable operational impact
• Direct access to ownership and genuine decision-making authority from day one
• A fast-moving environment where your fingerprints are on everything being built
• The opportunity to grow alongside a platform being developed for national distribution across the automotive industry

How to Apply

Submit your résumé along with a brief note, three to five sentences, describing one AI tool, agent, or automated workflow you have built. What did it do, what stack did you use, and what was the measurable result?

Pay

$75,430.00 - $89,125.00 per year

Benefits

• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance

Work Location

In person