Principal AI Engineer

Principal AI Engineer

VARITE is looking for a qualified Principal AI Engineer for one of its clients located in Glendale, WI. The client is a global leader in smart building technologies, energy solutions, and industrial automation. The company provides products and services that optimize energy efficiency, sustainability, and performance across buildings, industrial facilities, and vehicles.

Duration: 3-4 months

Location: Glendale, WI

Work Mode: Hybrid

Pay Rate Range: $100.00 - $110.00/hr on W2

Here's what you'll do:

• Our client is bringing AI into the way the world's most demanding buildings operate from datacenters and hospitals to pharmaceutical facilities and commercial campuses. We are transforming our smart building products into AI-native platforms capable of autonomous operations, intelligent operator assistance, and scalable AI deployment across cloud, edge, and on-premises environments.
• This is a focused, time-boxed engagement for a Principal-level AI engineer to embed within the Controls Software team and produce the foundational architecture assets and deployment playbooks that will accelerate AI adoption across our smart building platform at scale. While scoped as a 3–4 month engagement, there is potential for extension based on scope evolution and mutual fit.
• You will work hands-on alongside our engineers, learn our platform (with full internal expert support), and apply your deep AI systems expertise to create artifacts the team will execute against beyond the engagement.

How you will work:

• Collaborate daily with Controls SW engineers, architects, and product managers.
• Partner with internal domain experts who will onboard you to the platform — deep client knowledge is not expected on Day 1.
• Operate with principal-level autonomy: you drive the architecture, validate assumptions with the team, and produce deliverables iteratively.
• Participate in team rituals (standups, design reviews, retrospectives) as a full team member for the duration of the engagement.

What you'll need to win:

Required Qualifications: AI Systems & Architecture

• 10+ years of hands-on software or systems engineering experience, with at least 6 years focused on AI/ML in production environments.
• Proven experience designing and deploying AI/ML systems at scale — from data ingestion through inference and monitoring.
• Deep knowledge of MLOps: model deployment pipelines, versioning, observability, drift detection, and continuous improvement.
• Experience with edge-to-cloud AI execution strategies: balancing latency, cost, and resiliency across distributed environments, including LLM cost optimization (model selection, caching, routing).
• Strong command of data pipeline architecture, time-series data, event-driven systems, and API/microservices patterns.

GenAI & LLM

• Hands-on experience architecting production GenAI applications across multiple LLM providers (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and open-source models).
• Deep knowledge of RAG architectures, vector databases, embedding pipelines, and retrieval strategies at production scale.
• Experience with agentic architectures, multi-agent orchestration, and tool-calling patterns — including emerging standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Experience with LLM observability and tracing — instrumenting model calls, tool calls, and retrievals in production (e.g., LangSmith, LangFuse, or OpenTelemetry GenAI conventions).

Craft & Communication

• Ability to produce clear, durable architecture artifacts — reference architectures, decision records, playbooks — that engineers can execute without you in the room.
• Comfortable working collaboratively in an embedded team model; can give and receive direct technical feedback.
• Capable of running technical workshops or design sessions when needed.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in industrial, OT, or IoT environments (building automation, manufacturing, energy, or similar).
• Familiarity with protocols such as BACnet, MQTT, Modbus, or OPC UA.
• Exposure to cybersecurity frameworks in OT environments (e.g., IEC 62443, NIST CSF).
• Experience with AI use cases in buildings or critical infrastructure: FDD, energy optimization, predictive maintenance, alarm intelligence.
• Experience with containerization, CI/CD tooling, and observability platforms.
• Experience operationalizing AI safety guardrails, content filtering, and governance controls in production GenAI systems.

What success looks like:

• A validated AI reference architecture that the Controls SW team can build against confidently.
• Deployment playbooks that are immediately usable — not aspirational documents.
• Engineers who have meaningfully leveled up through collaboration with you.
• Clear architectural foundation for our smart building platform to evolve toward autonomous, AI-native building operations.

Benefits:

• Health Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Retirement Plans: Participation in a company-sponsored retirement savings plan.
• Legal Service Plans: Offering access to attorneys for legal advice and representation.

VARITE is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.