Senior AI Engineer

POSITION SUMMARY:

We are seeking an Sr AI Engineer to join our Information Technology team at our corporate office in Springfield MO.

The Sr AI Engineer serves as a senior technical leader responsible for architecting scaling and governing enterprise AI platforms and solutions aligned with the enterprise AI roadmap. This roleleadsthe design and operationalization of advanced AI systems including generative AI agentic workflows retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and intelligent automation capabilities that drive measurable business impact across the enterprise.

This position provides technical leadership across AI engineering initiativesestablishesenterprise AI standards and best practices mentors engineering teams and partners closely with business data security and platform leaders to ensure scalable secure and production-ready AI ecosystems.

This position requires working onsite in our Springfield MO headquarters.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

• Lead enterprise AI architecture decisions reference patterns and platform strategies across multiple business domains.
• Collaborate with stakeholders toidentifyAI-driven automation and insight opportunities and define success metrics/acceptance criteria.
• Translate business needs into technical requirements and design end-to-end AI workflows including data sourcing orchestration and integration points.
• Ensure data readiness by assessing availability and quality across enterprise and third-party sources; partner with Data Engineering to design andvalidatepipelines that produce high-quality AI-ready datasets with data contracts lineage and schema-drift detection.
• Perform data preparation and transformation in SQL or Python when needed for AI workflows.
• Conduct data quality assessmentsestablishvalidation rulesmaintaindata lineage and data contracts and implement schema-drift detection with automated gates.
• Design develop and deploy LLM-based RAG agentic AI and generative AI solutions using modern ML/LLM frameworks and cloud AI services.
• Contribute to and implement enterprisePromptOpsandLLMOpspractices includingevaluationpipelines prompt governance structured outputs guardrails rollback strategies and automated testing.
• Build andoperateautonomous and semi-autonomous AI workflows with auditable actions human-in-the-loop approvals feature flags and operational safeguards.
• Implement model lifecycle management with experiment tracking model registry retraining embedding/vector-index versioning rollback and monitoring.
• Lead evaluation and selection of foundation models embedding strategies vector retrieval architectures and inference optimization techniques.
• Integrate AI solutions via APIs and event-driven architectures using versioned backward-compatible contracts with semantic versioning and deprecation policies.
• ApplyMLOpsandLLMOpsbest practices for scalable observable and secure deployments including containerization orchestration CI/CD and model lifecycle management.
• Implement automated testing including unit integration regression evaluation and contract testing for AI systems and services.
• Partner with Data Scientists and engineering teams toproductionizeAI and ML solutions into scalable enterprise systems.
• Provide technical mentorship and code/design reviews for AI Engineers Data Engineers and software development teams.
• Ensure responsible AI governance including RBAC/IAMsecretsmanagement PII minimization/redaction audit logging explainability and compliance with governance and privacy standards.
• Lead implementation of observability frameworks including tracing telemetry hallucination detection token/cost monitoring dashboards and alerting.
• Establish service-levelobjectives(SLOs) operational standards reliability metrics and incident response processes for AI platforms.
• Research and evaluate emerging AI technologies such as multimodal models vector databases agentic AI and AI infrastructure platforms.
• Contribute to AI standards reusable frameworks engineering documentation and enterprise best practices.
• Participate in on-call rotation and operational support activities as needed.
• ALL OTHER DUTIES AS ASSIGNED

EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS:

• Minimum Degree Required: Bachelors Degree in Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Data Science Engineering or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 5 years of experience in AI engineering machine learning systems distributed systems or enterprise AI platform development.
• 3 years designing and deploying enterprise-scale LLM RAG or agentic AI solutions in production environments.
• Demonstrated experience leading architecture and delivery of scalable AI platforms or mission-critical AI systems.
• Deepproficiencyin Python and modern AI/ML frameworks.
• Experience deploying LLM/RAG systems with enterprise data including evaluation frameworks guardrails and structured-output validation.
• Strong experience with vector databases semantic retrieval systems and embedding optimization strategies.
• Solid understanding of SQL data modeling and data preparation for AI consumption.
• Experience with major cloud platforms (AWS Azure GCP) and enterprise data platforms/warehouses such as Snowflake.
• Experience with API development containerization orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes and CI/CD automation.
• Strong understanding of AI governance security compliance and responsible AI practices.
• Experience mentoring engineers and leading cross-functional technical initiatives.

KNOWLEDGE SKILLS AND ABILITY:

• Strong systems architecture and platform engineeringexpertise.
• Ability to lead technical strategy and influence architectural direction across teams.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with an end-to-end ownership mindset.
• Ability to translate complex AI concepts into actionable business outcomes.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across technical and business teams.
• Expertisein designing scalable resilient and maintainable AI systems.
• Proficiencywith Git-based version control and collaborative development workflows.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and iterative delivery models.
• Understanding ofAI feasibility ROI and value realization within enterprise environments.
• Experience mentoring engineers and fostering engineering best practices.
• Commitment to responsible and ethical AI development aligned with company standards.

TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS:

• N/A

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

Regularly sits and works on a computer.

Occasionally stands and walks.

Seldom/never lifts up to 50 lbs.

INDEPENDENT JUDGEMENT:

Performs duties within scope of general company policies procedures and objectives. Analyzes problems and performs needs assessments. Uses judgment in adapting broad guidelines to achieve desired result. Regular exercise of independent judgment within accepted practices. Makes recommendations that affect policies procedures and practices.

Full Time Benefits Summary:
Enjoy discounts on retail merchandise our restaurants world-class resorts and conservation attractions!

• Medical
• Dental
• Vision
• Health Savings Account
• Flexible Spending Account
• Voluntary benefits
• 401k Retirement Savings
• Paid holidays
• Paid vacation
• Paid sick time
• Bass Pro Cares Fund
• And more!

Bass Pro Shops is an equal opportunity employer. Hiring decisions are administered without regard to race color creed religion sex pregnancy sexual orientation gender identity age national origin ancestry citizenship status disability veteran status genetic information or any other basis protected by applicable federal state or local law.

Reasonable Accommodations

Qualified individuals with known disabilities may be entitled to reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and certain state or local laws.
If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process please visit your nearest location or contact us at