job purpose: The AI Automation Engineer will play a key role in advancing fairlife's vision of establishing a world-class Decision Intelligence ecosystem. This role centers on building AI agents and automated workflows that reason, plan, and execute tasks end-to-end - turning manual, repetitive processes into reliable automation across manufacturing, supply chain, and business operations. Working in a modern Microsoft Fabric and Azure environment, the engineer will design, develop, and deploy production-grade agentic systems that connect to enterprise tools and data to unlock operational efficiency and faster, better-informed decisions.
responsibilities: - Design, build, and deploy AI agents that autonomously reason, plan, and execute multi-step tasks to automate business workflows
- Identify manual, repetitive, and high-friction processes and re-engineer them as reliable, automated agentic workflows
- Orchestrate single- and multi-agent workflows using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, or AutoGen
- Integrate agents with internal tools, APIs, databases, and enterprise systems - including via the Model Context Protocol (MCP) - to enable reliable, end-to-end task execution
- Implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines to ground agents in fairlife's domain-specific data
- Apply prompt engineering, tool and function calling, and rigorous evaluation to make agents accurate, reliable, and production-ready
- Leverage MLOps/LLMOps best practices to deploy, monitor, evaluate, and continuously improve agentic systems in production
- Build responsible-AI guardrails - safety, human-in-the-loop oversight, transparency, and compliance - into every automated system
- Partner with the Senior Data Scientist and cross-functional teams to identify and prioritize high-impact automation opportunities
skills/qualifications required: - 2+ years of relevant experience in AI engineering, machine learning engineering, software engineering, or related fields
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, AI/Machine Learning, Engineering, or a related STEM field (or equivalent practical experience)
- Proficiency in Python and experience building applications with large language models (LLMs) and foundation models
- Hands-on experience with agentic AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen) and orchestration patterns
- Experience with prompt engineering, tool and function calling (including the Model Context Protocol), retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, ChromaDB)
- Familiarity with cloud platforms (Azure/Fabric, AWS, or GCP) for scalable AI deployment
- Experience with MLOps/LLMOps practices and responsible AI principles, including monitoring, governance, and compliance
- Strong software engineering fundamentals, including API development, version control (Git), and containerization (Docker)
- Strong communication skills for collaborating with business and technical teams
- A bias toward automation: a track record of spotting repetitive, manual workflows and building tools or agents to eliminate them (preferred)
- Experience in manufacturing and supply chain (preferred)
how fairlife nourishes you: At fairlife, we believe in better - and that includes how we support our people. We offer a comprehensive suite of benefits and wellbeing resources designed to support you physically, emotionally, socially, and financially, both in and out of work.
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, effective day one!
- Supplemental health plans (hospital indemnity, accident, and critical illness insurance)
- Paid Time Off to recharge and support work-life balance
- Paid parental leave & adoption assistance (up to $10,000)
- Parental support & family care benefits, including childcare resources and lactation support
- 401(k) to support retirement planning with up to 9% in employer match
- Wellness reimbursement (up to $500 for qualified wellbeing expenses)
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) for emotional wellbeing and work-life support
- Company-paid life insurance and short-term disability
- Employer HSA funding (for HDHP participants)
- Tuition reimbursement (up to $10,000) and student loan repayment ($200/month)
- Learning & development programs to unlock your full potential
- Rewards & recognition, matching gifts, free product, and Business Resource Groups
fairlife's nour!sh program is designed to meet you where you are - supporting your individual wellbeing journey while enabling you to do your best work every day.
This is a hybrid position based in our downtown Chicago office, with an expectation of working onsite three (3) days per week.position location: Chicago, IL
reports to: Senior Data Scientist, Decision Intelligence
travel requirements: 10%
Exempt/Nonexempt: Exempt
*Base pay offered may vary depending on geography, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. A full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position, is offered.
Base pay range:
$85,000-$105,000 USD
