AI Engineer / LLM Developer (Microsoft Foundry)

AI Engineer / LLM Developer (Microsoft Foundry)

Long-term contract role with a leading investment management firm.

Hybrid work environment – NJ (3 days/week onsite)

General Skill Profile (in order of preference)

Microsoft Foundry, Python, LLM Development, Azure AI, Prompt Engineering, APIs, Microsoft Fabric (plus), Power BI (plus)

What You Will Do

Design, develop, and deploy production-grade AI applications using the Microsoft Foundry platform.

Build custom Generative AI solutions leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to solve complex business problems.

Develop AI-powered applications that integrate seamlessly with the Microsoft ecosystem, including Azure services, Microsoft Fabric, and Power Platform where appropriate.

Build and optimize Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) solutions and other enterprise AI architectures.

Develop Python-based services, APIs, and automation workflows supporting AI applications.

Evaluate, fine-tune, and optimize LLM performance for accuracy, scalability, and business value.

Collaborate with business stakeholders to translate business problems into AI-driven solutions.

Integrate enterprise data sources into AI applications while ensuring security and governance best practices.

Prototype new AI capabilities and transition successful prototypes into production.

Document AI architectures, development standards, and implementation best practices.

Stay current with emerging AI technologies and recommend practical applications for the organization.

What You Will Need

4+ years of professional software development experience with advanced Python.

Hands-on experience building and deploying applications on the Microsoft Foundry platform.

Demonstrated experience developing production LLM-based applications - not just experimentation or theoretical knowledge.

Experience with prompt engineering, model evaluation, and LLM optimization techniques.

Experience integrating AI solutions with enterprise data sources and APIs.

Strong understanding of AI application architecture and scalable solution design.

Experience building REST APIs and Python-based backend services.

Experience working with large and complex datasets.

Strong communication skills with the ability to explain AI concepts to technical and business audiences.

Experience within financial services is highly desirable.

Nice to Have

Microsoft Fabric experience.

Azure AI Services / Azure OpenAI.

Vector databases and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).

Semantic search and embeddings.

Power BI integration.

Machine Learning experience.

MLOps or AI deployment pipelines.

Experience with LangChain, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, or similar AI frameworks.