Senior AI Engineer – Contract To Hire

66degrees

Senior AI Engineer developing production-ready AI applications for business and clinical problems. Collaborating with Engineering, Product, and Data teams to deliver scalable, reliable AI applications.

Posted 7/20/2026contractRemote • Illinois • 🇺🇸 United StatesSeniorWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in designing and delivering production-grade Generative AI solutions, with a strong foundation in software engineering principles and hands-on experience in modern AI systems. Proficient in Python and cloud-native application development, with a focus on improving AI application reliability and performance in regulated industries.

Highest-signal resume keywords

Generative AI SolutionsMachine Learning ApplicationsPython ProgrammingCloud-Native DevelopmentAI System Evaluation

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Generative AIMachine LearningPrompt EngineeringTool CallingRetrieval-Augmented GenerationStructured ExtractionSystem DesignTestingScalabilityMaintainability

Tools & Technologies

AWSGCPRelational DatabasesNoSQL DatabasesVector DatabasesEmbeddingsSemantic Search

Industry Keywords

HealthcareInsuranceFinancial ServicesRegulated Industry

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudGoogle Cloud PlatformNoSQLPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Design, build, and maintain production-grade Generative AI, Agentic AI, and machine learning applications.
Develop evaluation and testing approaches to measure model performance, identify regressions, and improve solution quality.
Apply LLMs, multimodal models, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), structured extraction, and tool calling to solve real-world healthcare workflows.
Partner with Engineering, Product, Data, and Operations teams to integrate AI capabilities into client’s systems.
Improve the reliability, observability, guardrails, and monitoring of production AI applications.
Stay current with advancements in AI technologies and apply them pragmatically to deliver business value.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Bachelor’s degree – Required
Master’s degree – Preferred
5+ years of software engineering, applied AI, machine learning, or related technical experience, including at least 1 year of recent experience designing and delivering production-grade Generative AI solutions.
Hands-on experience with modern AI systems, including LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agents, structured extraction, classification, or workflow automation.
Proficiency in Python, with experience building cloud-native applications on AWS or GCP and working with relational and/or NoSQL databases.
Practical experience with prompt engineering, tool calling, retrieval, model selection, context management, and AI application debugging.
Experience evaluating AI system quality using metrics, test datasets, human review, and error analysis.
Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, testing, scalability, and maintainability.
Hands-on experience building retrieval-augmented AI applications using vector databases, embeddings, and semantic search.
Preferred: Experience working in healthcare, insurance, financial services, or another regulated industry.
Preferred: Familiarity with AI evaluation, prompt optimization, guardrails, or human-in-the-loop workflows.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Health insurance
Retirement plans
Paid time off
Flexible work arrangements
Professional development
Bonuses
Stock options
Equipment allowances
Wellness programs