AI Specialist

Job Description

Position Overview

Join the IT team at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory as an AI Specialist within our AI/Cloud Services team. We are seeking a highly skilled, collaborative, and motivated professional with experience designing and operationalizing artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and hybrid on-premises environments.

In this role, you will help establish and expand SLAC's enterprise AI capabilities in support of scientific research, accelerator operations, and administrative functions. You will work closely with researchers, business stakeholders, data scientists, software engineers, cybersecurity, DevOps engineers, and cloud platform teams to translate complex needs into secure, scalable, and sustainable AI solutions.

The successful candidate will combine hands-on technical expertise with strong communication, consulting, and problem-solving skills. You will help teams move from experimentation and proofs of concept to reliable production services, while promoting reusable platforms, responsible AI practices, and appropriate governance. Because SLAC's AI and cloud capabilities continue to evolve, this position requires someone who is comfortable working through ambiguity, evaluating emerging technologies, and helping colleagues develop their skills.

Your specific responsibilities will include:

• Lead the end-to-end development and operationalization of AI and machine learning solutions across AWS, GCP, and hybrid environments, including problem definition, data ingestion, feature engineering, model development, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management.

• Partner with researchers, business stakeholders, data scientists, software engineers, cybersecurity, and platform teams to understand requirements and translate them into scalable, secure, cost-effective, and supportable AI solutions.

• Design and implement data pipelines, orchestration workflows, model-training environments, evaluation processes, and deployment architectures using cloud-native services.

• Use AWS services such as Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, EC2, S3, Glue, Lambda, Athena, Redshift, Step Functions, and related analytics, security, and monitoring services.

• Use Google Cloud services such as Vertex AI, Gemini, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Dataflow, Dataproc, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, and related analytics, security, and monitoring services.

• Develop and support generative AI solutions, including retrieval-augmented generation, enterprise search, prompt management, model routing, model evaluation, guardrails, and AI agents and workflows.

• Evaluate and optimize traditional machine learning and generative AI models for accuracy, reliability, latency, scalability, security, and cost-effectiveness.

• Establish MLOps and LLMOps capabilities, including source control, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, automated testing, model and prompt versioning, evaluation, observability, drift detection, logging, alerting, and rollback procedures.

• Design solutions that integrate cloud AI services with SLAC's on-premises infrastructure, enterprise applications, scientific data sources, identity systems, networking, and security services.

• Apply cloud architecture and security best practices, including identity and access management, least-privilege access, encryption, secrets management, network segmentation, data protection, audit logging, compliance, resilience, and cost governance.

• Help develop reusable AI platforms, reference architectures, templates, APIs, and shared services that enable SLAC teams to innovate without creating unnecessary duplication or isolated solutions.

• Work with cybersecurity, privacy, legal, data owners, and governance stakeholders to assess data sensitivity, third-party model usage, information-sharing requirements, intellectual property considerations, and other AI-related risks.

• Promote responsible AI practices, including transparency, human oversight, explainability, fairness, accountability, privacy, security, and appropriate documentation of model limitations.

• Conduct technical evaluations and proofs of concept for emerging AI/ML technologies and provide clear recommendations based on business value, scientific value, risk, supportability, interoperability, and total cost of ownership.

• Troubleshoot complex technical issues spanning AI models, data pipelines, cloud services, APIs, networking, identity, security, and hybrid infrastructure.

• Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and knowledge sharing to team members who are developing their cloud, data, and AI skills.

• Create and maintain architecture diagrams, technical standards, operational runbooks, support procedures, model documentation, decision records, and service documentation.

• Prepare and deliver technical presentations, demonstrations, training workshops, and model-explainability reports for technical and non-technical audiences.

• Collaborate with cloud providers, consultants, vendors, Stanford University partners, and other external organizations while ensuring that SLAC retains the knowledge needed to operate and support its services.

• Stay current with developments across AWS, Google Cloud, open-source AI frameworks, foundation models, AI agents, data platforms, and responsible AI practices.

To be successful in this position, you will bring:

• A bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, data science, engineering, or a related field and ten years of increasingly responsible technical experience, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

• Demonstrated experience designing, building, deploying, and supporting AI/ML solutions in production cloud environments.

• Substantial experience with AWS or GCP AI/ML and data services, along with the ability and willingness to develop proficiency across both platforms.

• Experience with relevant AWS technologies such as Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, S3, Glue, Lambda, Athena, Redshift, and related services.

• Experience with relevant Google Cloud technologies such as Vertex AI, Gemini, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Dataflow, Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, and related services.

• Strong programming skills in Python and experience with relevant languages or frameworks such as SQL, Java, R, Scala, PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, Hugging Face, LangChain, or similar technologies.

• Experience developing generative AI applications using foundation models, APIs, embeddings, vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation, prompt engineering, model evaluation, and AI agent or workflow frameworks.

• Experience with data engineering, including data ingestion, cleansing, transformation, metadata, feature engineering, data quality, large-scale datasets, data warehouses, and distributed processing technologies such as Spark.

• Experience deploying and maintaining models in production through MLOps or LLMOps practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, monitoring, evaluation, drift detection, logging, and lifecycle management.

• Experience with infrastructure as code and automation technologies such as Terraform, CloudFormation, AWS CDK, or Google Cloud deployment tooling.

• Understanding of cloud architecture practices across networking, identity and access management, encryption, secrets management, observability, resilience, performance optimization, and cost management.

• Experience integrating cloud services with on-premises systems in a hybrid enterprise environment.

• Knowledge of data governance, privacy, cybersecurity, responsible AI, and risk-management principles applicable to enterprise and research environments.

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, including the ability to diagnose issues that cross application, data, model, cloud-platform, security, and network boundaries.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts, risks, limitations, and tradeoffs to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Demonstrated ability to document solutions thoroughly and create operationally useful architecture diagrams, standards, procedures, and runbooks.

• Demonstrated ability to learn independently and adapt to rapidly changing AI, cloud, data, and security technologies.

The candidate best positioned to succeed with the SLAC team will also demonstrate:

• A collaborative and service-oriented approach, with an interest in understanding the needs of researchers, engineers, business teams, and operational staff before proposing a solution.

• The ability to balance rapid experimentation with the security, reliability, governance, and long-term support requirements of a national laboratory.

• Comfort working in an evolving environment where requirements, platforms, and organizational priorities may not yet be fully defined.

• A practical, platform-oriented mindset that favors reusable capabilities, open standards, interoperability, and shared solutions over isolated or vendor-specific implementations.

• The judgment to determine when a solution should use AWS, GCP, on-premises infrastructure, open-source technologies, or a combination of platforms.

• An understanding that scientific and accelerator workloads may have requirements that differ from traditional enterprise IT, including large datasets, specialized computing, low-latency operations, and long-lived research workflows.

• The ability to work effectively with teams at different levels of cloud and AI maturity, including mentoring colleagues and enabling others rather than becoming a single point of dependency.

• A willingness to be hands-on-building, testing, troubleshooting, documenting, and operationalizing solutions in addition to providing architectural guidance.

• Intellectual curiosity and a willingness to ask questions, challenge assumptions constructively, and evaluate technologies based on evidence.

• Strong ownership and follow-through, including the ability to move an initiative from early discovery through production readiness and operational handoff.

• An appreciation for knowledge sharing, transparency, and clear documentation so that services can be operated and improved by the broader team.

• The ability to communicate limitations and risks honestly while remaining focused on helping teams identify a workable path forward.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience supporting AI, scientific computing, research, higher education, government, or regulated environments.

• Experience designing multi-cloud architectures or enabling applications that can use models and services across multiple cloud providers.

• Experience with Kubernetes and container platforms such as Amazon EKS, Google Kubernetes Engine, Docker, or related technologies.

• Experience with enterprise AI gateways, model-routing platforms, API management, vector databases, data catalogs, and observability platforms.

• Experience evaluating and integrating commercial and open-source foundation models.

• Familiarity with high-performance computing, GPU-based workloads, distributed model training, or large-scale scientific datasets.

• Familiarity with frameworks and standards such as the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, NIST security controls, or comparable responsible-AI and cybersecurity practices.

• Relevant AWS, Google Cloud, machine learning, data engineering, security, or Kubernetes certifications.

SLAC employee competencies

• Effective Decisions: Uses job knowledge and sound judgment to make quality decisions in a timely manner.

• Self-Development: Pursues a variety of opportunities to continue learning and developing.

• Dependability: Can be counted on to deliver results and accepts personal responsibility for expected outcomes.

• Initiative: Pursues work and interactions proactively, with optimism, positive energy, and motivation to move initiatives forward.

• Adaptability: Responds constructively to change and maintains an open outlook while adjusting to evolving needs.

• Communication: Ensures effective information flow across audiences and creates and delivers clear, appropriate written, spoken, and presented messages.

• Relationships: Builds relationships that foster trust, collaboration, and a positive environment for achieving common goals.

Physical requirements and working conditions

• Consistent with its obligations under the law, the University will provide reasonable accommodation to an employee with a disability who requires accommodation to perform the essential functions of the position.

• Given the nature of this position, SLAC is open to on-site, hybrid, and remote work options.

• Occasional work outside standard business hours may be required for production deployments, maintenance activities, incident response, or major project transitions.

• Rare on-call work may be required.

Work standards

• Interpersonal Skills: Demonstrates the ability to work effectively with SLAC colleagues, clients, partners, vendors, and external organizations.

• Promote a Culture of Safety: Demonstrates commitment to personal responsibility and respect for environmental protection, safety, and security; communicates related concerns; and uses and promotes safe behaviors based on training and lessons learned. Meets applicable roles and responsibilities described in the ESH Manual, Chapter 1-General Policy and Responsibilities ( .

• Is subject to and expected to follow all applicable University policies and procedures, including personnel policies and other requirements described in Stanford University's Administrative Guide ( .

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory explores how the universe works at the biggest, smallest and fastest scales and invents powerful tools used by researchers around the globe. As world leaders in ultrafast science and bold explorers of the physics of the universe, we forge new ground in understanding our origins and building a healthier and more sustainable future. Our discovery and innovation ( help develop new materials and chemical processes and open unprecedented views of the cosmos and life's most delicate machinery. Building on more than 60 years of visionary research, we help shape the future by advancing areas such as quantum technology, scientific computing and the development of next-generation accelerators.

SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science ( . The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

The job duties listed are typical examples of work performed by positions in this job classifications and are not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, tasks and responsibilities. Specific duties and responsibilities may vary depending on department or program needs without changing the general nature and scope of the job or level of responsibility. Employees may also perform other duties as assigned.

Consistent with its obligations under the law, the University will provide reasonable accommodation to any employee with a disability who requires accommodation to perform the essential functions of their job.

All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital or family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or genetic information. All staff at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory must be able to demonstrate the legal right to work in the United States. SLAC is an E-Verify employer.

As a national laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is responsible for adhering to the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12) and Department of Energy (DOE) Order 473.1A, which require employees to obtain and maintain a HSPD-12 Personal Identify Verification (PIV) Credential. To obtain this credential, employees must successfully complete the applicable tier of federal background investigation post hire and receive a favorable federal adjudication. The tier of federal background investigation will be determined by job duties and national security or public trust responsibilities associated with the job. All tiers of investigation include a declaration of illegal drug activities, including use, supply, possession, or manufacture within the last 1 to 7 years (depending on the applicable tier of investigation). Illegal drug activities include marijuana and cannabis derivatives, which are still considered illegal under federal law, regardless of state laws.

For foreign national candidates:

If you have not resided in the U.S. for three consecutive years, you are not eligible for the PIV credential and instead will need to obtain a favorable Local Site Specific Only (LSSO) Federal risk determination to maintain employment. Once you meet the three-year residency requirement, you will be required to obtain a PIV credential to maintain employment. The tier of federal background investigation required to obtain the PIV credential will be determined by job duties at the time you become eligible for the PIV credential.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer and supports diversity in the workplace. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital or family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or genetic information. All staff at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory must be able to demonstrate the legal right to work in the United States. SLAC is an E-Verify employer.