Build the AI That Moves Life Sciences Forward as a Senior Applied AI Engineer 

Location: San Diego – hybrid | Payrate: $120 - $132/hour | Schedule: 1st shift, Mon to Fri 9am to 5pm 

PDS Tech Commercial is partnering with a leader in the biotechnology industry to find a Senior Applied AI Engineer who can turn emerging AI capabilities into secure, scalable, production-ready solutions. 

This is an opportunity to design and deploy agentic AI, copilots, RAG applications, document intelligence, predictive models, and decision-support tools that improve workflows across the enterprise. You’ll work alongside business leaders, Product Owners, Data Engineering, Security, Enterprise Architecture, and AI Governance to move solutions from prototype to real-world production in a regulated life-sciences environment. 

What You’ll Do 

Solution Design & Delivery 

• Design and deliver agentic AI solutions, copilots, RAG applications, document intelligence, predictive models, and decision-support tools. 

• Build end-to-end AI pipelines integrating approved models, governed enterprise data, APIs, tools, and workflow orchestration. 

• Partner with business and technical stakeholders to define requirements, success measures, acceptance criteria, and production-ready solutions. 

• Develop solutions that balance innovation with security, reliability, scalability, and cost. 

Engineering Excellence 

• Apply strong software engineering, MLOps, and LLMOps practices for testing, deployment, monitoring, versioning, reliability, and cost management. 

• Build reusable components, prompts, evaluation assets, engineering standards, and technical guardrails. 

• Troubleshoot and optimize AI applications throughout their production lifecycle. 

Technical Leadership 

• Lead defined technical workstreams and facilitate architecture and design decisions. 

• Communicate technical options, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs to both technical and business audiences. 

• Coordinate technical delivery across internal teams and external partners. 

• Provide code reviews, design feedback, troubleshooting support, and informal mentorship. 

Governance & Responsible AI 

• Implement appropriate security, privacy, responsible AI, data classification, access controls, and traceability. 

• Design human-approval safeguards and oversight into AI workflows. 

• Document solution architecture, data and model usage, evaluations, limitations, controls, and operational procedures. 

Your Boarding Pass — Required Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or related field—or equivalent practical experience. 

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, machine learning engineering, or applied AI, including production delivery. 

• Strong Python and software engineering skills, including modular design, testing, source control, CI/CD, APIs, and code review. 

• Hands-on experience with LLM APIs, agent/workflow orchestration, tool integration, RAG, and enterprise data sources. 

• Experience deploying and supporting secure AI solutions in Azure, AWS, or GCP. 

• Ability to guide technical workstreams, evaluate design tradeoffs, mentor peers, and communicate effectively with technical and business stakeholders. 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience building production-grade agentic AI, including tool calling, state/memory, workflow execution, evaluation, and human approvals. 

• Experience with Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Copilot Studio, Semantic Kernel, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar platforms. 

• Experience with vector search, MLOps/LLMOps platforms, and regulated or data-sensitive environments. 

• Proven success coordinating technical delivery across teams or external partners. 

• Experience establishing reusable engineering practices and standards. 

What Success Looks Like 

You’ll know you’re making an impact when: 

• AI solutions deliver measurable business value and sustained user adoption. 

• Solutions are secure, trusted, compliant, reliable, supportable, and cost-conscious. 

• Reusable engineering patterns accelerate AI delivery without compromising governance. 

• Technical workstreams move forward with clear decisions, effective collaboration, and thoughtful risk management. 

• AI moves beyond prototypes and becomes a reliable part of how the organization works. 

Why Join Us? 

Don’t Just Build AI. Build What’s Next. 

At PDS Tech Commercial, we connect talented technology professionals with opportunities to make a meaningful impact in innovative industries. 

In this role, you’ll work at the intersection of AI engineering, biotechnology, and enterprise transformation, collaborating with experts across engineering, data, security, architecture, governance, and business functions. 

You’ll have the opportunity to work with emerging AI technologies while solving real-world problems in an environment where innovation, responsible AI, technical excellence, and collaboration matter. 

This role is ideal for an engineer who enjoys moving quickly from prototype to production, thrives in complex environments, and wants their work to have a tangible business and scientific impact. 

Ready to Build the Future of AI? 

If you’re an experienced AI or software engineer ready to design intelligent systems, solve complex problems, and help bring trusted, production-ready AI to life sciences, we want to hear from you. 

Apply today for the Senior Applied AI Engineer opportunity with PDS Tech Commercial and help build the AI solutions shaping the future of biotechnology. 

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