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University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · 2 days ago

AI Developer - Hybrid/Remote

Urbana, IL

Full-time

Hybrid

Entry, Mid Level

$80K/yr - $90K/yr

2+ years exp

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a leading research institution seeking an AI Developer within Administrative Information Technology Services (AITS). This role involves designing, building, and deploying AI-enabled applications, collaborating with various teams to ensure compliance and best practices, and supporting ongoing operations of AI systems.

Higher Education

No H1B

Responsibilities

Assist the analyst in translating functional business problems into technical requirements for AI solutions

Help assess whether use cases are best solved with prompt engineering, no /low code tools, RAG (retrieval augmented generation), or custom development

Communicate progress, risks, and results to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Provide guidance on best practices for AI use, prompt engineering, and automation

Assist in determining the level of ROI and development complexity to assess viability and priority of moving forward with a given solution

Collaborate with security, privacy, accessibility, and compliance teams to ensure solutions adhere to university system policies (e.g., FERPA, HIPAA, data classification, accessibility standards)

Design, prototype, and develop AI-enabled applications and services using current and emerging platforms, including but not limited to: Azure AI services, Copilot Studio and related tools for building chatbots, agents, and automated workflows, on-premises AI/LLM servers and open-source models, including opportunities for fine-tuning and custom model development where appropriate, and other approved AI tools and services as needed

Build data pipelines for model training, fine-tuning, evaluation, and monitoring

Develop custom algorithms, prompts, and inference workflows tailored to business requirements

Integrate AI services and APIs into existing systems and applications

Write clean, efficient, maintainable code in languages such as Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or Java

Develop with sound security practices and techniques

Develop with sound accessibility practices and techniques

Build scalable and secure backend services, microservices, or APIs to support AI solutions

Implement automated testing where possible, and use version control, CI/CD, and performance optimization practices

Perform unit testing and prepare solutions for user acceptance testing

Create documentation for architecture, design patterns, development processes, and support purposes

Deploy AI components and applications to cloud environments (Azure, AWS, GCP) and to on-prem AI servers as needed

Configure monitoring, logging, and basic analytics for AI endpoints, including usage, performance, and error tracking

Troubleshoot production issues and optimize reliability, latency, and cost of AI services

Assist in maintaining model and endpoint lifecycles (e.g., upgrading models, rotating keys, updating configurations)

Partner with data engineers, data scientists, analysts, and business teams to understand data sources, quality, structure, and use-case requirements

Assist in data preprocessing, labeling, feature engineering, and evaluation

Ensure compliance with data privacy, security, and governance standards

Once relevant training and experience have been obtained, support production activities associated with AI solutions. This may require evening or weekend hours, depending on the business criticality of the solution

Provide support for testing, configuration, and maintenance needed for scheduled upgrades and outages

Provide technical guidance and support to users, analysts, and power users of AI tools; collect feedback for continuous improvement

Stay current with emerging AI capabilities, tools, and best practices

Perform other duties as assigned that are appropriate for an AI Developer

Qualification

AI developmentCloud deploymentPython programmingData pipelinesWeb APIs integrationMicroservices architectureAI frameworksCommunication skillsProject managementProblem-solvingTeam collaboration

Required

High school diploma or equivalent

Any one or any combination totaling two (2) years (24 months) from the following categories: College coursework which includes Information Technology (IT), IT Management, Programming, IT systems, or a closely related discipline, as measured by the following conversion table or its proportional equivalent: 30 semester hours equals one (1) year (12 months), Associate's Degree (60 semester hours) equals eighteen months (18 months), 90 semester hours equals two (2) years (24 months), Bachelor's Degree (120 semester hours) equals three (3) years (36 months)

Work experience in IT-related functions, such as hardware/software support, programming, network design, network engineering, IT systems integration, or closely related field

Preferred

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or related field (or equivalent experience)

3+ years of professional software development experience

Experience building or integrating with web APIs (REST/JSON) and working with common data formats

Experience with other cloud AI platforms and services (AWS Bedrock, AWS SageMaker, Google Vertex AI, Google AI Studio)

Experience working with LLM serving and deployment frameworks such as Ollama or NVIDIA NIM

Experience building LLM orchestration or RAG workflows using LangChain (or similar frameworks)

Experience fine-tuning or deploying LLMs or generative AI models

Experience developing web front-end user interfaces using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with at least one modern framework (e.g., React, Angular, or Vue)

Experience designing and implementing accessible user interfaces

Experience designing and deploying microservices and containerized applications (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)

Hands-on experience with Azure for application deployment, scripting, or automation, including practical use of Azure AI Foundry/Azure AI Studio for working with AI services and model deployments

Benefits

Health

Dental

Vision

Life Insurance

A Retirement Plan

Paid time Off

Tuition waivers for employees and dependents

Company

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is dedicated to building upon its tradition of excellence in education, research, public engagement and economic development.

Founded in 1915

Champaign, IL, US

10001+ employees