AI Implementation Engineer

Job Description

Job Description

Title:   AI Implementation Engineer

Pay Rate: $35 - $40/hour DOE

Location: Hillsboro, OR / On-site

Type: 3 months temp to hire

About  Vital AI Labs 

Vital AI Labs is our sibling company who builds AI systems for clients — and we prove them first across our own operating companies. Our parent company, Vital Enterprises, spans technology, staffing, manufacturing, and professional services. It gives us something most AI consultancies don't have: real businesses with real operational problems where we can build, break, and validate our approach before we put it in front of a client. When we tell a customer something works, it's because we've already run it ourselves.

We're small, we move fast, and the work is real. Nobody here is writing strategy decks.

About the Role

This is a hands-on engineering seat. You will write a lot of code, most of it with agentic tools, against deadlines that belong to someone else. You'll also do something that matters more here than at most shops: you'll be the person who proves the work actually holds up. AI-assisted development produces code fast. It also produces code that looks right and isn't. Catching that before a client does is a core part of this job, not an afterthought.

What you will be doing:

Build (60%) 

• Implement features, integrations, and data pipelines against a Lead's scope
• Connect AI capabilities to real business systems — databases, APIs, third-party platforms, existing internal tools
• Build with frontier models (Anthropic, OpenAI, leading open-source) using agentic coding tools
• Turn a rough scope into working software and raise your hand early when the scope is wrong 

Test and Verify (25%)

• Test what you and others build — including work generated by AI agents — before it reaches a client
• Write the tests, run the flows manually, and find the edge cases that the happy path hides
• Build evals for AI-driven features where correctness isn't a simple pass/fail
• Reproduce and diagnose reported issues; own the fix through to verification

Support and document (15%)

• Fix what ships and keep delivered systems running
• Write handoff documentation clients and colleagues can actually use
• Build internal tools for our own operating companies between client engagements

About You

You are a technically strong software engineer with deep experience building production-ready solutions and a passion for helping organizations rethink how work gets done through AI. You thrive in fast-paced environments where you can balance hands-on development, strategic thinking, and communication with diverse stakeholders.

Required Qualifications:

• Real engineering foundation — 2-3+ years professional experience, or an equivalent client-focused portfolio clearly built with AI. Two paths in, and we mean both. Either you've shipped production software on a team, or you've built substantive working systems for real users and can prove it. What we're testing for is the same either way: can you reason about data models, debug something broken, and work in a codebase you didn't write?
• Agentic coding output we can run and inspect. Send us GitHub repositories, deployed applications, tools we can actually use. We want to see real systems — full-stack apps, integrations between platforms, CLIs, mobile or desktop tools, databases and the schemas behind them. One AI-generated landing page is not a portfolio.
• You can explain how you build, not just that you did. Expect us to open your code and ask why. How do you structure context for an agent? When do you let it run and when do you take the wheel? What did you do when it confidently produced something wrong? Candidates who can't walk through their own work don't advance.
• Genuine skepticism about AI output. You don't assume generated code is correct because it runs. You test the thing you just built as if someone else wrote it and you don't trust them.
• You can work inside someone else's scope — and push back when it's wrong. Most of your work will be defined by a Lead. That takes a particular temperament: execute the plan faithfully, and speak up early and clearly when you can see it won't work. Both halves matter.
• Clear written and verbal communication. You'll write documentation, status updates, and sometimes messages a client reads. You don't need to present to executives, but you do need to communicate like a professional.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Integration and API work — connecting systems that weren't designed to talk to each other
• Data modeling, SQL, and working with messy real-world data
• Consulting, agency, or other client-facing delivery experience
• Testing and evaluation of AI systems specifically (evals, prompt regression, output validation)
• Exposure to more than one industry or business domain

Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the US. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment Visas.

 

About Cinder

Cinder is a people-first staffing and recruiting company committed to creating workplaces where employees feel valued, supported, and engaged. Our mission is to leverage our power as a recruiting and consulting company to build workplaces where people thrive. Backed by our ISO 9001 certification, we deliver high-quality staffing solutions, and our clients have rated us over 100% for multiple quarters. Join us and be part of a team that makes a real impact!