Senior AI Engineer

Senior AI Engineer [Onsite]

No Visa Sponsorship is available for this position.

This position is 100% on-site and located on the Cornell University Campus in Ithaca, New York.

About Information Technology at Cornell

Information Technology (IT) is a strategic enabler for many functions at Cornell University, with staff located across colleges, administrative units, and campuses throughout the institution. While comprised of many organizations, IT operates as one partnering closely with faculty, staff, and students to support teaching, research, and business operations. By being embedded where the Cornell community is, IT is well positioned to provide support ranging from day‑to‑day needs to large, complex initiatives that advance major academic, research, and operational objectives across the university. Check out this link to find out more about IT@Cornell

What will you do:

The Senior AI Engineer serves as the technical lead for the AI Engineering team, providing expert‑level guidance, architectural leadership, and hands‑on development in support of Cornell’s enterprise AI services. This role is responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining complex production‑grade AI applications and systems, ensuring they meet the highest standards of security, scalability, and reliability. The Senior AI Engineer mentors developers and technical leads, establishes engineering best practices, and ensures AI projects remain on the correct technical trajectory throughout the development lifecycle.

This position directs and evaluates advanced AI solutions, leads the development and enhancement of enterprise AI systems, and formulates standards and methodologies that shape how AI applications are built across the university. The Senior AI Engineer collaborates closely with the Principal Solutions Architect for the AI Platform to define patterns and reference architectures that ensure all AI Innovation Lab applications are production‑ready and aligned with Cornell’s secure AI infrastructure.

The role applies deep technical expertise across Generative AI technologies, API development, authentication and identity protocols, and cloud‑native architectures. It also integrates AI Innovation Lab services with Cornell enterprise systems using standards such as OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, JWT, LDAP, and Microsoft identity services. Additionally, the Senior AI Engineer develops or refines procedures to address the most complex challenges related to system capacity, operational constraints, and distributed AI system performance.

As a senior leader within the AI Innovation Lab, the Senior AI Engineer provides technical direction to project teams—including project managers, business analysts, subject‑matter experts, developers, and quality‑assurance specialists—ensuring that solutions are well‑designed, well‑implemented, and aligned with institutional strategy.

While position responsibilities vary, every member of our community is expected to foster a culture of belonging and a healthy work environment by communicating across differences; being cooperative, collaborative, open, and welcoming; showing respect, compassion, and empathy; engaging and supporting others regardless of background or perspective; speaking up when others are being excluded or treated inappropriately; and supporting work/life integration of oneself and others.

What We Need

A resume is required for further consideration for this position. A cover letter outlining your interest and how your experience and goals align with the potential for mutual success in the role are strongly encouraged for consideration. When applying through our system, please remember to attach your application materials (Cover Letter and Resume) in PDF format.

Required Qualifications:

• •Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, information technology, or a related field; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• •5–7 years of professional software engineering experience, demonstrating progressively advanced responsibility in designing and developing production‑grade applications and services.
• •Proven ability to design, build, test, deploy, and maintain complex AI or ML‑driven applications in a production environment, ensuring high levels of security, reliability, and scalability.
• •Strong experience developing cloud‑native applications and services, preferably in AWS or a comparable cloud platform.
• •Demonstrated expertise with Generative AI technologies, API development, and distributed systems engineering.
• •Experience integrating applications with enterprise identity and authentication systems, using protocols such as OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML, JWT, LDAP, and Microsoft identity services.
• •Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership, mentor developers and technical leads, establish engineering best practices, and guide solutions throughout the development lifecycle.
• •Strong analytical and problem‑solving skills, with experience addressing complex system capacity, performance, and operational challenges.
• •Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for diverse audiences, including project managers, analysts, subject‑matter experts, and senior leadership.
• •Ability to cultivate and develop inclusive working relationships with students, faculty, staff, and community members.

Preferred Qualifications:

• •Master’s degree in computer science, data science, software engineering, information systems, or a related technical field.
• •Experience working in higher education, research computing, or similarly complex enterprise environments, especially supporting faculty or research‑driven AI use cases.
• •Hands‑on experience delivering and operating Generative AI / LLM‑backed applications in production environments, including model orchestration, vector databases, and AI agent frameworks.
• •Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, ECS) and building scalable distributed systems.
• •Familiarity with DevOps and MLOps practices, including CI/CD pipelines, observability, monitoring, logging, metrics, tracing, and reliability‑focused engineering practices for customer‑facing services.
• •Experience participating in incident response and on‑call operations for production systems.
• •Experience designing or supporting secure, production‑grade AI solutions hosted on cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• •Knowledge of model governance, responsible AI frameworks, and AI risk management, including data privacy and compliance considerations.
• •Experience with enterprise integration patterns, secure API gateways, and identity‑driven architectures.
• •Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, lead design reviews, define technical standards, and influence architectural decisions across multiple teams.
• •Experience contributing to or supporting grant‑funded research initiatives, innovation projects, or cross‑institution collaborations.

Application Information:

No Visa Sponsorship of any kind is available for this position.

No Relocation assistance will be provided for this position .

Rewards and Benefits

• •This position is 100% on-premise and located on the Cornell University Campus in Ithaca, New York.
• •Cornell receives national recognition as an award-winning workplace for our health, wellbeing, and sustainability. Our benefits programs include comprehensive health care options, generous retirement contributions, access to wellness programs, and employee discounts with local and national retail brands. We invite you to follow this link to get more information about our benefits: Understand Your Benefits | Working at Cornell
• •Our leave provisions include health and personal leave, three weeks of vacation and 13 holidays: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the day after, and an end of the year winter break