Senior AI Engineer for AI Systems
Upwork
About the role
We are building AI-powered features across our product, including intelligent assistants, document understanding, and automation workflows.
We are looking for an experienced AI Engineer who has **real hands-on experience building production systems with LLMs and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)**.
This is not a prompt engineering role.
We need someone who can design and build **end-to-end AI systems**.
--- • *What you will work on:** • Build RAG-based systems using company data (documents, cost catalogs, project data, etc.) • Integrate LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, and other models into production workflows • Design pipelines for: • Data ingestion (PDFs, documents, structured data) • Embedding and retrieval • Context management and ranking • Improve response quality, latency, and cost efficiency • Implement evaluation and feedback loops for AI outputs • Work on real use cases such as: • AI estimating assistant • Document parsing and insights • Smart search across project data • AI-powered recommendations
--- • *Requirements (must-have):** • Strong experience with RAG architectures (vector DBs, embeddings, retrieval strategies) • Hands-on experience with LLM APIs: • OpenAI (ChatGPT) • Anthropic (Claude) • Experience building production-grade AI systems (not prototypes only) • Solid backend skills (Node.js or Python) • Experience working with structured and unstructured data (PDFs, documents, APIs) • Understanding of token usage, latency, and cost optimization
--- • *Preferred experience:** • Experience with tools like: • Pinecone, Weaviate, or similar vector databases • LangChain, LlamaIndex (or custom pipelines) • Experience with document processing (OCR, parsing, chunking strategies) • Experience with multi-agent or workflow-based systems • Familiarity with AWS or similar cloud environments
--- • *What we care about:** • You have built real AI systems used by users • You think about quality, reliability, and cost • You can explain trade-offs (accuracy vs latency vs cost) • You don’t rely only on frameworks—you understand what’s happening under the hood
--- • *Project scope:** • Start with a defined project (2–4 weeks) • Opportunity for long-term collaboration if successful
--- • *To apply, please include:**
1. Example of a RAG system you built (architecture + what problem it solved)
2. How you approach: • Chunking • Retrieval • Context building
3. What you would improve in a typical “basic RAG setup”
4. Links to any relevant projects, repos, or demos
---
We are looking for someone experienced who can move fast and build reliable systems.
If you’ve only experimented with LLMs or followed tutorials, this role is not a fit.
Requirements
- AI estimating assistant
- Smart search across project data
- AI-powered recommendations
- Strong experience with RAG architectures (vector DBs, embeddings, retrieval strategies)
- Hands-on experience with LLM APIs:
- Experience building production-grade AI systems (not prototypes only)
- Solid backend skills (Node.js or Python)
- Experience working with structured and unstructured data (PDFs, documents, APIs)
- Understanding of token usage, latency, and cost optimization
- Experience with tools like:
- Pinecone, Weaviate, or similar vector databases
- LangChain, LlamaIndex (or custom pipelines)
- Experience with document processing (OCR, parsing, chunking strategies)
- Experience with multi-agent or workflow-based systems
- Familiarity with AWS or similar cloud environments
- You have built real AI systems used by users
- You think about quality, reliability, and cost
- You can explain trade-offs (accuracy vs latency vs cost)
- You don’t rely only on frameworks—you understand what’s happening under the hood
- Start with a defined project (2–4 weeks)
- Opportunity for long-term collaboration if successful
- Links to any relevant projects, repos, or demos
- We are looking for someone experienced who can move fast and build reliable systems
- If you’ve only experimented with LLMs or followed tutorials, this role is not a fit
Responsibilities
- Build RAG-based systems using company data (documents, cost catalogs, project data, etc.)
- Integrate LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, and other models into production workflows
- Data ingestion (PDFs, documents, structured data)
- Context management and ranking
- Improve response quality, latency, and cost efficiency
- Implement evaluation and feedback loops for AI outputs
- Work on real use cases such as:
- What you would improve in a typical “basic RAG setup”
Skills
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