Company: Firstam
Location: Santa Ana, California
Posted on: October 13
As a Senior AI Software Engineer, you will be instrumental in building, deploying, and maintaining production-ready AI applications using readily available foundation models. You will bridge the gap between model development and practical application, ensuring robust, scalable, and efficient AI systems that deliver tangible value. We re looking for passionate individuals who thrive in fast-paced, collaborative environments, are committed to ethical AI practices, and are excited by the opportunity to help reshape a 135-year-old company from the inside out.
What You ll Do:
Design and implement end-to-end AI systems, integrating foundation models into various applications and workflows.
Apply and optimize model adaptation techniques, including prompt engineering, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and fine-tuning, to tailor foundation models for specific use cases.
Develop and integrate AI architecture components such as context enhancement, input/output guardrails, model routers/gateways, caching mechanisms, and agent patterns to ensure system reliability and security.
Implement AI pipeline orchestration to define and chain together different components of an AI system, ensuring seamless data flow and complex workflow execution.
Optimize AI model inference for latency and cost, utilizing techniques such as quantization, distillation, and parallelism.
Collaborate closely with Data Scientists to integrate trained models and with Data Engineers to ensure efficient data pipelines for AI applications.
Contribute to defining and implementing systematic evaluation pipelines for AI applications, focusing on metrics such as factual consistency, generation capability, and instruction-following for open-ended outputs.
Engage in continuous monitoring and observability of AI systems in production to detect failures and drifts, and to identify opportunities for improvement and cost savings.
Assist in productizing AI-powered outputs and features, ensuring alignment with customer needs and product strategy.
What You ll Bring:
5+ years of experience.
Proven experience building applications with foundation models and deploying AI systems into production environments.
Strong proficiency in prompt engineering, RAG, and finetuning techniques for model adaptation.
Familiarity with AI architecture patterns and their practical implementation.
Understanding of inference optimization techniques and experience with high-performance computing environments (e.g., GPUs).
Knowledge of AI evaluation methodologies for open-ended models and experience setting up robust evaluation pipelines.
Proficiency in programming languages commonly used in AI development, such as Python, with an understanding of relevant APIs and frameworks.
Ability to work in an iterative, experimental environment and adapt to rapidly changing model capabilities and tools.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills for working with diverse, cross-functional teams.
Pay Range: $126,100 - $212,658 Annually
This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting. Pay is based on a number of factors which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, business requirements and geographic location.
** Note that the following statements only apply to candidates who will be working from an unincorporated area within Los Angeles County. **
First American will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws (e.g., the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act).
First American intends to conduct a review of an applicant s criminal history in connection with a conditional offer. First American reasonably believes that a criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following material job duties for this position potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: handling of confidential, proprietary or trade secret information belonging to First American or its customers, administrating or facilitating financial transactions, and the ability to meet customer-imposed criminal history requirements.
Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.