Carnegie Mellon University

Senior Applied AI Infrastructure Engineer - NREC

Carnegie Mellon University$120K — $145K *
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • B.S. in relevant technical field or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years in software engineering, machine-learning infrastructure, or similar roles.
  • Strong Python programming skills.
  • Experience with Linux development and system administration.
  • Familiarity with large language models and AI-assisted workflows.
  • Excellent technical communication and documentation skills.
  • Proficient in modern software practices and deployment tools.

Responsibilities

  • Evaluate generative and agentic AI tools for engineering leadership.
  • Support cloud and locally hosted AI tool deployment based on project needs.
  • Design, implement, and maintain internally hosted AI services and infrastructure.
  • Deploy large language models on GPU systems for various projects.
  • Integrate AI tools with engineering systems like Jira, Confluence, and Jenkins.
  • Develop secure APIs, interfaces, and environments for AI tools.
  • Prototype AI-assisted workflows to enhance engineering tasks.

Benefits

  • Collaborative work environment that encourages innovation.
  • Direct impact on projects with military and defense applications.
  • Opportunities for mentorship and leadership.
Full Job Description
We are seeking a dynamic Senior Applied AI Infrastructure Engineer to lead and contribute to the evaluation, deployment, and integration of secure generative and agentic AI tools, LLMs, and support of self-hosted infrastructure across engineering workflows. This is an exciting opportunity for someone who thrives in a fast-paced and innovative setting. In this role, you will be instrumental in advancing internal AI-assisted workflows, infrastructure reliability, and secure multi-GPU model serving, ensuring our team delivers exceptional and groundbreaking results.

Your primary responsibilities include:
  • Evaluating generative and agentic AI tools and recommending practical approaches to engineering leadership.
  • Supporting cloud-hosted AI tools where appropriate and locally hosted tools where project confidentiality or data-handling requirements prohibit cloud use.
  • Designing, implementing, documenting, testing, and maintaining internally hosted AI services and supporting infrastructure.
  • Deploying and operating large language models on shared GPU systems and smaller project- or team-specific platforms.
  • Integrating AI tools with engineering systems such as source-code repositories, Jira, Confluence, Jenkins, internal documentation, and test infrastructure.
  • Developing secure tool interfaces, APIs, Model Context Protocol servers, and sandboxed environments that allow AI agents to perform useful engineering tasks.
  • Prototyping and evaluating AI-assisted workflows for software development, testing, documentation, requirements analysis, and other engineering activities.
  • Helping engineers use supported AI tools effectively across software, embedded, FPGA, mechanical, electrical, and other technical workflows.
  • Developing internal documentation, examples, training materials, and reusable configurations for recommended tools and practices.
  • Measuring the reliability and usefulness of AI-assisted workflows, including the quality of generated code, test results, review effort, and failure modes.
  • Surveying emerging tools and techniques and implementing promising approaches where they provide practical value.
  • Following best practices for team software development, including peer review, automated testing, version control, issue tracking, security review, and integrated documentation.


Required Qualifications:
  • B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years of professional software engineering, machine-learning infrastructure, DevOps, platform engineering, or developer-tools experience.
  • Strong Python programming skills.
  • Linux development and system-administration experience.
  • Familiarity with large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, tool-using agents, or AI-assisted software-development workflows.
  • Strong technical communication and documentation skills.
  • 3 or more of the following:
    • Experience deploying and maintaining software services.
    • Experience with containers and reproducible deployment tools such as Docker.
    • Experience integrating software systems through APIs, command-line tools, authentication mechanisms, or similar interfaces.
    • Experience with modern software engineering practices, including version control, code review, testing, CI/CD, logging, and troubleshooting.
    • Ability to evaluate new technologies, communicate technical tradeoffs, and make practical recommendations.


We especially want to hear from you if you have experience or qualifications in ANY of the following areas:
  • Self-hosted LLM inference frameworks such as vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, llama.cpp, Ollama, NVIDIA NIM, or similar tools
  • Multi-GPU systems, model serving, resource scheduling, or inference performance optimization
  • Model Context Protocol servers or other structured interfaces for AI tool use
  • Integration with Jira, Confluence, Jenkins, Git-based repositories, artifact repositories, or internal knowledge systems
  • Coding agents that can modify code, run builds and tests, and prepare pull requests
  • Sandboxed code execution, container isolation, secrets management, access control, or audit logging
  • Evaluation of LLM applications, coding assistants, agents, or retrieval systems
  • Retrieval-augmented generation, document ingestion, embeddings, reranking, or code indexing
  • Cloud AI services and data-sensitive or disconnected AI deployments
  • Embedded software, FPGA development, robotics, simulation, or hardware-in-the-loop testing
  • GPU-based machine learning infrastructure
  • Developing internal technical documentation, training, examples, or reusable engineering workflows
  • Machine learning, computer vision, or robotics applications


Other Requirements:
  • Successful pre-employment background check


This position will require work on a variety of projects, including projects that involve military/defense applications and/or are funded by military/defense sponsors.

Are you interested in joining our versatile team at NREC where you will have a direct impact on operations and meaningful projects?

Join a collaborative environment where your hands-on skills, leadership, and mentorship will directly influence operations and inspire the next generation of innovators.

Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Job Function
Software/Applications Development/Engineering
Position Type
Staff - Regular
Full Time/Part time
Full time
Pay Basis
Salary
More Information:

  • Please visit "Why Carnegie Mellon" to learn more about becoming part of an institution inspiring innovations that change the world.
  • Click here to view a listing of employee benefits

About Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university that was founded in 1900. The university is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is known for its programs in computer science, engineering, and the arts. Carnegie Mellon has a diverse student body and offers undergraduate and graduate programs in a variety of fields. The university has a strong focus on research and has partnerships with a number of companies and organizations. Carnegie Mellon is consistently ranked among the top universities in the United States.
Learn more about Carnegie Mellon University
Size
14,000 employees
Industry

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