AI and Automation Engineer

AI & Automation Engineer

Founded in 2015 and based in Chicago, IL, privately held Braviant Holdings, LLC is a leading provider of tech-enabled consumer credit products that combine breakthrough technology and cutting-edge machine learning to transform how people access credit online. Our next-generation approach to lending reduces credit barriers and creates a Path to Prime®, helping millions of underbanked consumers build credit history, reduce their cost of borrowing, and take control of their personal finances. Braviant has been named multiple times to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies and has been recognized as a Best Place to Work.

We are a lean team of approximately 40 people. Everyone rolls up their sleeves here, including this role.

About the Role

We are building out a new AI & Automation practice at Braviant and are hiring two AI and Automation Engineers to join the team. These are hands-on builder roles focused on designing, deploying, and governing AI-powered automation workflows across our business, spanning consumer lending originations, credit risk, compliance, collections, and internal operations.

You will report to the Head of AI & Automation and work closely with stakeholders across the business to identify manual and semi-automated processes that can be replaced or accelerated by agentic AI workflows. Day-to-day, this means building agents that do real things: routing decisions, processing documents, triggering actions across systems, escalating exceptions to humans, and logging everything so we can audit and improve over time.

This is a greenfield role at a company that uses Claude, Claude Code, and the broader Anthropic ecosystem as primary AI infrastructure. You will build on top of those tools and extend them. We are an AWS shop, and our preferred agentic framework is Strands Agents SDK, though we expect you to choose the right tool for the problem and bring framework judgment, not just framework familiarity.

If you are early in your AI engineering career and want to own real production systems rather than prototype demos, and if you want to build in a regulated, high-stakes environment where the quality of your work actually matters, this role is for you.

What You'll Build

Agent & Workflow Development

• Design and build AI agent workflows that automate or accelerate business processes across originations, credit risk, compliance, collections, and operations

• Migrate manual and semi-automated processes into governed, production-grade agent pipelines with appropriate human-in-the-loop checkpoints, approval gates, and escalation patterns

• Build with Strands Agents SDK as the preferred default framework; apply judgment to use CrewAI, LangGraph, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, Haystack, or other frameworks where better suited

• Implement structured outputs, function calling, and tool-use patterns to connect LLMs with internal business logic and data

Tool Integration & Automation Engineering

• Manage, build, and maintain MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers and clients to give agents structured, governed access to internal APIs, databases, and third-party data providers

• Develop skills, plugins, and tool integrations for Claude and other AI platforms used across the organization

• Integrate AI capabilities with existing systems via REST APIs, event queues, and cloud-native AWS services

• Evaluate and implement lightweight automation connectors (n8n, Zapier, Make) for business stakeholder workflows where full agent development is not warranted

Observability & Responsible AI

• Instrument every workflow you build with logging, tracing, and alerting so teams can audit agent behavior, debug failures, and measure outcomes

• Implement guardrails and usage controls across AI deployments, covering autonomous, semi-autonomous, ad hoc, scheduled, event-driven, manually triggered, and human-review-gated workflows

• Contribute to responsible AI documentation including runbooks, incident response playbooks, and acceptable use standards for AI-assisted processes in a regulated fintech environment, in partnership with the Technology Operations team

• Stay current on agentic AI developments, vulnerability patterns, and compliance requirements relevant to consumer lending

Collaboration

• Work directly with business stakeholders to translate process requirements into agentic workflow specs — you need to understand what the business does, not just what the framework supports

• Contribute to shared frameworks, reusable agent components, and internal engineering standards developed by the Head of AI & Automation

• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and cross-team knowledge sharing

What You'll Bring

Required

• 2 to 4 years of software engineering experience with production Python and SQL; additional languages a plus

• Hands-on experience building and shipping AI/ML or LLM-powered solutions in real production environments, not just coursework or personal projects

• Practical experience with at least one agentic or LLM orchestration framework (Strands, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, or similar)

• Experience integrating AI services via APIs and building tool-use or function-calling patterns with LLMs

• Familiarity with AWS and cloud-native architecture patterns

• Active daily use of AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code, VS Code with Cline, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or similar — this is table stakes, not a differentiator

• Experience with prompt engineering and structured outputs; comfort iterating on prompts as a core part of building

• Strong written communication — you can document a workflow clearly enough for a compliance reviewer, not just another engineer

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred

• Direct experience with Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock AgentCore, or the Strands Agents SDK

• Experience building or consuming MCP servers and clients

• Familiarity with skills and plugin development for Claude, Microsoft Copilot, or similar AI platforms

• Experience with OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, HyperAgent, or similar open-source agent frameworks

• Familiarity with workflow automation platforms such as n8n, Zapier, Make, or similar

• Background in fintech, consumer lending, payments, or another regulated financial services environment

• Familiarity with RAG architectures, vector databases, or knowledge graph approaches

• Working knowledge of application security fundamentals: auth, secrets management, RBAC, and audit logging

• Familiarity with observability and evaluation practices for AI systems: logging, tracing, prompt evaluation, and model monitoring

Benefits & Perks

Compensation at Braviant is competitive and commensurate with experience. Details will be discussed with qualified candidates during the interview process. In addition, we provide:

• Comprehensive healthcare including medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Generous paid time off, including PTO, sick time, and 13 company holidays
• 401(k) with company contribution
• Participation in annual discretionary bonus plan
• Regular team and company gatherings

Braviant is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.