Applied AI Solutions Specialist

We are looking for an Applied AI Solutions Specialist to help turn the promise of AI into practical tools that make our people and programs stronger. **Job Summary** Curious about what AI can really do for mission-driven work? In this role, you will help teams across IREX and its programs identify, test, and launch practical uses of artificial intelligence that solve real problems. This is a hands-on, collaborative role for someone who enjoys translating program and business needs into workable, scalable solutions. You will partner with technical and nontechnical colleagues, build and evaluate prototypes, and help the best ideas grow into secure, sustainable tools. You will work primarily with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure AI services, and Power Platform, and you will have the freedom to bring in other commercial and open-source technologies when they are a better fit. Our focus is not AI for its own sake. It is solving defined problems and creating reusable approaches that IREX can support and scale, both internally and with external partners. You will thrive here if you are curious, practical, and comfortable learning across technologies. You bring the technical depth to build and integrate solutions, along with a thoughtful eye for user needs, data quality, security, privacy, cost, governance, and long-term ownership. **What You'll Do** **Build AI Solutions** - Work with teams to define problems, users, expected value, and success measures before selecting an AI approach. - Prototype and implement AI-enabled assistants, workflows, search experiences, and lightweight applications. - Configure and extend commercial AI platforms and, when needed, develop integrations or custom components using APIs and code. - Design and test AI agents and multi-step workflows that use approved tools, data sources, and systems to complete clearly defined tasks with appropriate human oversight. - Engage with users in iterative usability and functionality testing and refinement throughout the tool development process. - Help transition successful prototypes into reliable solutions with clear ownership, documentation, and support arrangements. - Create reusable templates and implementation patterns where they can reduce duplication across programs. **Test, Learn, and Evaluate** - Use retrieval, structured prompts and outputs, tool calling, agent patterns, and human review appropriate to each use case. - Plan and run focused proofs of concept and pilots. - Evaluate usefulness, accuracy, reliability, safety, usability, and cost using practical measures suited to the use case. - Identify limitations, bias, failure modes, and operational risks, and recommend proportionate safeguards. - Document results, lessons learned, and recommendations so teams can make informed go, revise, or stop decisions. - Where appropriate, generate brief knowledge products for external publication, strengthening IREX's position as an AI-enabled organization by "learning in the open." **Make Knowledge and Data Work for AI** - Design practical approaches to organizing, indexing, describing, chunking, and retrieving knowledge based on the source content and use case. - Connect AI solutions to approved content in SharePoint, websites, databases, APIs, and enterprise applications. - Work with data and content owners to address data and content quality, permissions, access, retention, and lifecycle requirements. - Help teams understand how source quality, organization, metadata, and permissions affect the accuracy and reliability of AI results. **Connect Platforms and Systems** - Build primarily with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure AI services, SharePoint, Power Platform, and related technologies, while considering other tools when they offer a better fit. - Integrate AI capabilities with approved applications, APIs, databases, identity services, and business processes. - Assess technical feasibility, licensing, consumption cost, implementation effort, and ongoing support needs. - Maintain clear documentation of solution components, dependencies, permissions, and operational ownership. **Champion Responsible AI** - Apply IREX requirements for privacy, security, accessibility, responsible AI, and data protection throughout solution design and testing. - Use least privilege, appropriate human oversight, logging, monitoring, and fallback processes based on the risk of the use case. - Support lightweight review and lifecycle practices from experimentation through deployment, modification, and retirement. - Raise material security, privacy, legal, or operational risks and work with the appropriate owners on mitigation. **Collaborate and Share What Works** - Partner with IREX program teams, IT, business units, researchers, monitoring and evaluation teams, communications staff, and other stakeholders. - Help teams determine whether AI is appropriate or whether simpler automation, software, content, or process changes would work better. - Explain technical choices, constraints, risks, and support requirements clearly to technical and nontechnical audiences. - Provide practical guidance, examples, and reusable resources that strengthen AI literacy, document successful IREX use cases (for internal and external use), and reduce duplicated effort. **Salary Range: $140,000 - $165,000** Please note: While we aim to offer competitive compensation, not all candidates will be eligible for the upper end of the salary range. **What You'll Bring** - Bachelors Degree, Computer Science, Information Technology, Cyber Security or related fields. - 10 + years of progressive experience in Information Technology - Minimum of 2 -3 years demonstrated experience building or implementing AI-enabled applications, assistants, workflows, search solutions, or related tools. - Practical experience with large language models, AI APIs, MCPs, prompt design, retrieval-augmented generation, or similar applied AI techniques. - Experience connecting solutions to APIs, data sources, enterprise applications, or knowledge repositories. - Ability to use Python, JavaScript, low-code tools, or comparable technologies to prototype and implement solutions. - Experience testing and improving AI solutions based on quality, usability, risk, and user feedback. - Understanding of privacy, security, access control, responsible AI, and data governance considerations. - Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to recommend approaches based on user and organizational needs rather than technology alone. - Ability to communicate clearly with technical and nontechnical audiences and work effectively across teams. - Ability to work independently and proactively, document work, and manage several focused experiments or implementations in an evolving environment. - **You must have unrestricted authorization to work in the United States.** **Bonus Qualifications** - Experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure AI services, SharePoint, Microsoft Graph, Power Platform, or related Microsoft technologies. - Experience moving a prototype or proof of concept into sustained operational use. - Familiarity with vector search, agent frameworks, application deployment, source control, or AI monitoring and evaluation tools. - Experience with enterprise identity, authentication, authorization, and role-based access controls. - Experience designing reusable templates, components, or implementation guidance. - Experience in international development, education, nonprofit, research, or another mission-driven environment. - Experience supporting multilingual, multicultural, or globally distributed users. **What Success Looks Like** Success means IREX turns a small number of well-defined AI opportunities into useful, responsible, and supportable solutions rather than a collection of disconnected experiments. In your first year, you will help deliver with defined users, owners, safeguards, support arrangements, and measures of value. You will also establish practical templates for intake, prototyping, evaluation, documentation, cost review, and transition to sustained use, while improving the readiness of selected knowledge sources. We will measure success by adoption, measurable value, reliability, security, maintainability, and our ability to reuse lessons and components across IREX without creating an unsustainable support burden. **What We Offer** At IREX, you'll work alongside committed, passionate, and collaborative colleagues who are united by a shared mission, making it a truly rewarding place to work. We offer learning, development, and growth opportunities, along with a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your overall well-being.