Senior AI Engineer (2 year LTE) at Gates Foundation

Job description

The Foundation We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally. The Team The Team Within Business Operations and the IT organization, the Enterprise Data Solutions (EDS) team designs and delivers enterprise-scale platforms and services across Knowledge Management, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Engineering, Business Intelligence, Data Infrastructure, and Health Data Platforms. The EDS team’s mission is to empower the Foundation with reliable, innovative, and data-driven solutions that enable timely, informed decision-making and support critical operational workflows. Central to this mission is the development of an AI-powered intelligent data and AI platform that enables employees to discover and interact with connected knowledge through conversational experiences. The Knowledge Mgmt & Insights (KMI) is an AI-first team and leverages technologies such as large language models (LLMs), knowledge graphs, and modern data platforms to deliver scalable, impactful enterprise-wide AI solutions. *This position is a limited-term position for 24 months and located in our Seattle, Washington office. This is a hybrid role with a requirement of 50% in office. Your Role As a Senior AI Engineer, you are a highly skilled individual contributor responsible for designing, building, and deploying AI solutions that support foundation and affiliate staff around the world. You bring strong technical expertise and a hands-on approach to developing scalable, secure, and reliable AI systems that address real organizational needs. You translate defined problem statements into effective technical solutions, partnering closely with the team and contributing directly to implementation and delivery. In this role, you play a key part in executing AI initiatives—designing solutions, integrating systems, and ensuring solutions are production-ready and aligned with engineering best practices. You collaborate with Lead Engineers and cross-functional partners to deliver high-impact AI capabilities, while proactively identifying opportunities to improve performance, usability, and scalability. You contribute to code quality, documentation, and shared standards, helping strengthen the team’s engineering discipline. You also support other engineers through knowledge sharing and collaboration, while continuing to grow your own expertise in AI technologies and approaches. Your work enables innovative access to knowledge assets at the foundation, helping drive better decision-making and streamline workflows to advance the organization’s mission globally. What You’ll Do Your work will include: Develop and implement agentic AI systems, including multi-step workflows, tool use, and autonomous task orchestration using LLM-based frameworks Design, build, and deploy scalable AI/ML solutions using Python and cloud-native services in Microsoft Azure (e.g., Azure OpenAI, Azure Foundry, Azure AI Search) Integrate AI capabilities into enterprise applications and workflows through APIs, microservices, and Azure-based architecture Translate business and technical requirements into robust, production-ready solutions, balancing performance, scalability, and maintainability Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and stakeholders to deliver AI solutions aligned to re