AI Foundational Model Engineer

Req ID: 379364

NTT DATA strives to hire exceptional, innovative and passionate individuals who want to grow with us. If you want to be part of an inclusive, adaptable, and forward-thinking organization, apply now.

We are currently seeking a AI Foundational Model Engineer to join our team in Jersey City, New Jersey (US-NJ), United States (US).

Role purpose

Design, build, deploy, and optimize enterprise-grade AI systems powered by foundation models, LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, and agentic AI workflows. The role converts AI concepts into secure, scalable, observable, and supportable production systems suitable for a regulated financial-services environment.

Primary ownership

• Production LLM applications, RAG pipelines, AI services, and model-serving integrations.
• End-to-end LLMOps/MLOps lifecycle from experimentation to deployment, monitoring, evaluation, rollback, and continuous improvement.
• Model adaptation, inference optimization, APIs, observability, and operational readiness for GenAI solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Design and implement LLM-powered applications such as knowledge assistants, document intelligence solutions, workflow agents, summarization tools, and decision-support systems.
• Build RAG pipelines using embeddings, chunking strategies, vector databases, semantic retrieval, reranking, response grounding, and citation patterns.
• Adapt and optimize models using LoRA, PEFT, instruction tuning, distillation, transfer learning, quantization, and domain adaptation techniques.
• Develop scalable APIs, microservices, model-serving components, and integration patterns across cloud, hybrid, or containerized environments.
• Optimize inference workloads for latency, throughput, token efficiency, cost, reliability, and user experience.
• Implement model and application observability, including prompt logs, retrieval quality, hallucination indicators, drift signals, feedback loops, cost telemetry, and service health.
• Embed security, privacy, Responsible AI, and model risk controls into AI application design and delivery.
• Create production documentation, runbooks, release notes, test evidence, and audit-ready implementation records.

Must-have candidate profile

• 7+ years in AI/ML engineering, platform engineering, software engineering, or applied machine learning.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs, transformers, embeddings, RAG, semantic search, and GenAI application patterns.
• Strong Python engineering skills with PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Semantic Kernel, or equivalent frameworks.
• Experience deploying production AI services using APIs, containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, cloud-native services, and monitoring platforms.
• Practical knowledge of model evaluation, fine-tuning, inference optimization, and secure data handling.

Preferred experience

• Banking, risk, compliance, financial crime, operations, or enterprise technology background.
• Experience with Azure OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Vertex AI, Databricks, vLLM, Triton, MLflow, Kubeflow, or model gateways.
• Exposure to model risk, AI governance, audit controls, AI cost governance, and private or open-source LLM deployments.

NTT DATA provides a reasonable range of compensation for U.S.-based positions. The starting pay range for this role will depend on the nature of the role offered and will either be [$139,872 - $209,808], or [$80-$100] if the role is hired as a temporary position. Actual compensation will depend on a number of factors, including the candidate’s relevant experience, technical skills, and other qualifications.This position may also be eligible for incentive compensation based on individual and/or company performance. If the position offered in temporary, the position will not be eligible for incentive compensation.This position is eligible for company benefits that will depend on the nature of the role offered. Company benefits may include medical, dental, and vision insurance, flexible spending or health savings account, life and ADD insurance, short and long term disability coverage, paid time off, employee assistance, participation in a 401k program with company match, and additional voluntary or legally-required benefits

About NTT DATA

NTT DATA is a $30 billion business and technology services leader, serving 75% of the Fortune Global 100. We are committed to accelerating client success and positively impacting society through re…