Senior AI Engineer

CDW • Full-time • Remote (Remote from Illinois, United States) • $124,000 - $174,600 / year • 2d ago

Fast Facts

This role involves transitioning AI models from prototype to production at CDW, focusing on building advanced agent systems that solve real business problems.

Responsibilities: Key responsibilities include architecting workflows, building data retrieval systems, performing automated evaluation, and optimizing AI applications for production use.

Skills: Required skills include expertise in orchestration frameworks, vector databases, prompt engineering, and experience with LLMs.

Qualifications: Preferred qualifications include a Bachelor's degree with 5 years experience in software engineering related to AI/ML, or 9 years of software engineering experience, along with strong communication skills.

Location: This is a remote position based in Illinois, United States.

Compensation: $124000 - $174600 / Annually

Description

At CDW, we make it happen, together. Trust, connection, and commitment are at the heart of how we work together to deliver for our customers. It’s why we’re coworkers, not just employees. Coworkers who genuinely believe in supporting our customers and one another. We collectively forge our path forward with a level of commitment that speaks to who we are and where we’re headed. We’re proud to share our story and Make Amazing Happen at CDW.

Job summary

We are seeking a Senior AI Engineer to transition our AI capabilities from "prototype" to "production." In this role, you will not just experiment with models; you will architect robust Agentic Systems that can plan, reason, and execute complex workflows autonomously for a wide variety of business user needs while experimenting with cutting-edge models and tools to push the boundaries of what’s possible.

The ideal candidate is a forward-thinking engineer who thrives on hands-on experimentation with AI models and frameworks, learns quickly, and is naturally curious. You will collaborate closely with product managers, business partners, and platform teams to deliver high-value AI agents that solve real-world problems across the enterprise

What you will do:

Agentic Engineering & Orchestration
Workflow Design: Architect complex, multi-agent workflows using Microsoft AI tech stack. Design, Develop and Deploy agents to handle loops, interruptions, and human-in-the-loop interventions.
Tool Use & Function Calling: Build reliable "tool layers" that allow LLMs to safely interact with internal APIs, databases, and third-party SaaS platforms (e.g., SalesForce, Workday, ServiceNow etc.)
State Management: Design persistence layers to manage agent memory, conversational history, and context windows efficiently.
Advanced Data & RAG Strategy
Retrieval Pipelines: Build production-grade data retrieval and integration systems. Optimize vector indexing, document chunking, and re-ranking algorithms to ensure high-precision context retrieval.
Data Quality: Collaborate with Data Engineers to curate "Golden Datasets" for agent consumption
LLMOps, Evaluation & Quality
Automated Evaluation: Build CI/CD pipelines for AI that include "LLM-as-a-Judge" testing. Leverage frameworks to score agent outputs for accuracy, hallucination, and safety before deployment.
Observability: Instrument applications with tracing tools to visualize agent reasoning chains, monitor latency, and debug failures in production.
Cost Optimization: Monitor token usage and latency, optimizing prompt density and caching strategies to maintain high performance at sustainable costs.
Innovation & Collaboration
Prototyping to Production: Rapidly validate new ideas using state-of-the-art models, then refactor successful prototypes into maintainable, tested production code.
Standards Adoption: Stay ahead of the curve by evaluating emerging technologies to standardize agent connectivity.

What we expect of you

Core Engineering: Bachelor’s degree and 5 years of software engineering experience, with exposure to AI/ML applications OR 9 years of software engineering experience, with exposure to AI/ML applications
AI Specialization: 2+ years specifically building with LLMs, with deep familiarity in:
Orchestration: LangChain, LangGraph, or similar state-based frameworks.
Vector DBs: Pinecone, Weaviate, or pgvector.
Prompt Engineering: Advanced techniques (Chain-of-Thought, ReAct, Few-Shot).
Production Mindset: Experience not just building demos, but operating them. You know how to handle rate limits, context window overflows, and non-deterministic errors.
Soft Skills: Ability to explain "probabilistic software" to non-technical stakeholders—managing expectations that agents are never 100% accurate, but can be 100% useful.
Excellent communication skills, with experience in documenting technical designs, sharing insights, and enabling team knowledge transfer.

What We Offer

Opportunity to design and build the next generation of enterprise AI agents.
A collaborative environment where experimentation and innovation are encouraged.

We make technology work so people can do great things.

CDW is a leading multi-brand provider of information technology solutions to business, government, education and healthcare customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. A Fortune 500 company and member of the S&P 500 Index, CDW helps its customers to navigate an increasingly complex IT market and maximize return on their technology investments. Together, we unite. Together, we win. Together, we thrive.

Pay range: $124,000 - $ 174,600 depending on experience and skill set

Benefits overview: https://cdw.benefit-info.com/

Salary ranges may be subject to geographic differentials

We make technology work so people can do great things. 

CDW is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regards to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by state and local law.

CDW is committed to fostering an equitable, transparent, and respectful hiring process for all applicants. During our application process, CDW’s goal is to get to know you as an applicant and understand your experience, strengths, skills, and qualifications. While AI can help you present yourself more clearly and effectively, the essence of your application should be authentically yours. To learn more, please review CDW's AI Applicant Notice.