Job Description & DutiesThe Role: ODI is looking for a builder who is ready to put AI to work for California. As our Chief AI Engineer, you will lead the technical design and delivery of AI solutions that solve real-world problems. You won't just be advising; you will be engineering systems that turn foundation models into practical tools, helping state departments move from manual processes to efficient, AI-augmented workflows.
This is a hands-on role focused on shipping code that matters. You will use cloud platforms common in state government (like Azure, GCP, AWS, and Snowflake) and bring a "product mindset" to ensure projects evolve from prototypes into reliable daily tools. If you are passionate about writing clean code, solving complex data challenges, and mentoring others in responsible AI engineering, we want you to be the technical heartbeat of our team.
What You Will Do- Build smart applications: Design and deploy intelligent applications that use the right tool for the job-whether that is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), fine-tuning, or other grounding techniques-to ensure results are accurate and context-aware.
- Turn messy text into insights: Engineer pipelines that take unstructured documents and turn them into structured, useful data.
- Automate with agents: Create autonomous workflows that can retrieve information and assist humans with complex analysis, all while keeping safety guardrails in place.
- Champion safe AI: Act as the technical conscience of the team, ensuring every system we build is ethical, secure, unbiased, and privacy-first.
- Scale and operationalize: Take "proof of concepts" and turn them into monitored production services using modern DevOps and MLOps practices.
- Teach and mentor: Run workshops, mentor data professionals, and help upskill the state workforce on the latest AI engineering practices.
ODI staff reside throughout California. The employee's workstation is located in Sacramento or Oakland, California. Travel to the Sacramento headquarters may be required as needed.This position provides telework opportunities in accordance with agency telework policies.Salary information - CalHR salary rules allow appointment at the entrance rate (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 2, § 599.673) of a classification. For classes with alternate ranges, placement is based on education/experience.You will find additional information about the job in the Duty Statement.
Desirable QualificationsWe encourage you to apply regardless of whether you think you meet 100% of the desirable qualifications.
- Applied AI Experience: Deep experience building and deploying LLM-backed applications, using techniques like RAG, vector search, or agentic orchestration.
- Cloud Fluency: Advanced proficiency in engineering within major cloud environments (AWS, GCP, Azure, or Snowflake) and deploying secure cloud infrastructure.
- Strong Coding Chops: Expert-level Python skills, with a focus on writing production-quality, testable, and maintainable code.
- MLOps Knowledge: Experience setting up CI/CD pipelines for machine learning to automate testing and deployment.
- Communication Skills: The ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and translate policy requirements into code.
- A "Responsible AI" Mindset: A proven track record of implementing guardrails, bias detection, and privacy protection in AI systems.
