Senior Developer, Applied AI

Are you a senior developer who thrives in collaborative environments and enjoys raising the bar for how teams build AI solutions?

The Senior Developer designs, develops and enhances software applications that support the mission of CFA Institute. This position will work within an agile, cross-functional delivery team through all phases of the software development lifecycle to deliver and maintain software solutions while contributing to coding and design standards. They are responsible for applying design patterns. The Senior Developer, Applied AI Engineer (Full-Stack) designs, develops, and rapidly prototypes high value artificial intelligence capabilities in support of CFA Institute’s mission. This role sits within the AI Lab and blends advanced software engineering, applied generative AI, and product-oriented experimentation. The position focuses on quickly validating AI use cases (e.g.,  retrieval augmented generation, agents, copilots, and workflows), establishing  evaluation and guardrails, and transitioning successful pilots to platform and engineering teams for production scale. The role operates within agile, cross functional delivery teams and applies modern design patterns, reference architectures, and engineering best practices to deliver clean, testable, reusable, and secure software assets . Do you bring both hands-on engineering depth and the ability to help shape standards, design patterns, and best practices within a growing AI Center of Excellence?

What You’ll Bring

• Design, develop, and unit test end-to-end AI-enabled software solutions following standard software development lifecycle practices.

• Rapidly prototype AI capabilities from concept to demonstrable proof of value, including UI/API layers, orchestration, retrieval, and evaluation.

• Implement retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and enterprise search patterns, including connectors, chunking strategies, embeddings, access control, relevance tuning, and grounding/citation techniques.

• Build and orchestrate agentic workflows using tool/function calling, workflow orchestration, guardrails, observability, and error handling.

• Establish evaluation frameworks, including test datasets, golden answers, regression testing, hallucination detection, safety checks, and light red teaming.

• Package successful outcomes into reusable assets such as reference implementations, templates, prompt/tool patterns, and operational runbooks.

• Design technical solutions aligned with CFA Institute reference architectures and enterprise standards.

• Partner with subject matter experts and business stakeholders (e.g., Education, RAS, GCC) to define success criteria, ROI signals, and iterate on solutions.

• Transition production ready concepts to engineering and platform teams with clear requirements, architecture documentation, risks, and operational considerations.

• Contribute to and evolve coding standards, knowledge bases, and shared engineering practices.

• Translate business objectives into technical designs and support deployment, maintenance, and lifecycle management of applications.

What You'll Do

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Minimum of five (5) years of professional software development experience with a strong delivery track record.

• Strong full stack and/or backend engineering experience, including API design and integration.

• Hands‑on experience building generative AI solutions using platforms such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, or Anthropic, including prompt and tool orchestration and embeddings.

• Proficiency in Python and/or TypeScript/Node.js.

• Practical experience with search and retrieval technologies, including vector databases or enterprise search platforms.

• Experience integrating enterprise systems and productivity platforms (e.g., Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, Atlassian, Salesforce).

• Experience across all phases of the development lifecycle, including requirements, development, testing, deployment, and support.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to deliver clear demonstrations of technical solutions.

• Ability to work effectively in ambiguous environments with a bias toward rapid experimentation and learning.

Preferred / Nice to Have

• Experience in education technology, assessment systems, simulations, scoring, or human in the loop review workflows.

• Familiarity with Microsoft Copilot Studio, M365 Copilot extensibility, Graph connectors, and Teams/SharePoint integration.

• Experience with observability and evaluation tooling, including tracing, prompt/version management, and experiment tracking.

• Familiarity with responsible AI practices, including data handling, privacy/PII considerations, access controls, auditability, and compliance.

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, performance monitoring, and cloud-native deployment patterns

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About CFA Institute

CFA Institute are the global leader in investment excellence and ethics. With nearly 200,000 charterholders across 160 markets, we drive professional growth, ethical behavior, and better markets. We care about our employees’ well-being, offering industry-leading benefits like:

• Comprehensive health coverage for you and your family

• Generous leave and time off

• Competitive retirement plans

• Flexible work options

• Wellness, education, and support programs

If you feel this opportunity could be the next step in your career, we encourage you to click “Apply” and complete our three-minute application.

Be part of a team committed to putting investors first and growing economies. Follow us @CFAInstitute on LinkedIn and X.

Important Message: Your application must clearly demonstrate how you meet the requirements as CFA Institute cannot make assumptions about your education, experience, or location. We thank all those who apply. Only those selected for further consideration will be contacted.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. CFA Institute prohibits both discrimination and harassment with regard to all identifying characteristics: any individual employee, group of employees, or prospective employee on the basis of race, color, national origin, citizenship or immigration status, religion, creed or belief, age, marital or partnership status, marital or family status, care giver status, pregnancy and maternity, sexual and other reproductive health decisions, physical abilities/qualities, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, predisposing genetic characteristic, military or veteran status, status as a victim or witness of domestic violence or sex offense or stalking, unemployment status, infectious disease carrier status, migrant worker status, educational background, socio-economic status, geographic location and culture or any other basis protected by applicable law. This policy impacts all aspects of employment, including but not limited to, recruitment, hiring, compensation, training, development, promotion, demotion, layoff, recall, furlough, transfer, leave of absence, and dismissal. This is a global policy that applies to all CFA Institute employees, regardless of location.

If, due to a disability or current medical condition, you need an accommodation or assistance to complete a job application, you can request one at any stage of the recruitment process. Please send an email to humanresources@cfainstitute.org noting the accommodations or assistance you are requesting. Please do not include any medical or health information in this email. We will review your request and contact you to discuss the possible options and arrangements. We will try our best to provide you with an accommodation or assistance that meets your needs and respects your preferences.

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