Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. ESS Companies is a heavy civil construction holding company that builds roads, bridges, and infrastructure while also developing software and AI systems. The Senior AI Solutions Engineer will own the implementation of AI tools to enhance business operations, connecting AI to data sources, evaluating commercial solutions, and building custom automation and applications.
Responsibilities
- Get more out of the tools we already have
- Connect AI to our data
- Evaluate and drive commercial (COTS) solutions
- Build custom automation and applications
Skills
- You can actually build. You write production code (Python and SQL at minimum), deploy it, and maintain it. You're comfortable in the cloud — GCP preferred, but we'll take strong AWS/Azure if you can switch
- You're fluent with modern AI tooling: LLM APIs, prompt design, retrieval/RAG patterns, agent frameworks, and AI-assisted development (Claude Code, Copilot, or equivalent). You understand where these tools are reliable and, more importantly, where they aren't
- You can work with data: SQL is second nature, you understand warehouses and ELT, and you can model and query messy real-world business data
- You can translate. You can talk to a project manager about job costing, then go write the code, then explain the result to a CFO. The translation is half the job
- You have good judgment about build vs. buy, and you're not religious about either
- You operate with minimal direction. You can take a vague business problem, scope it, and come back with something that works
- Construction, engineering, or other operations-heavy industry experience
- Experience integrating with enterprise systems such as ERP (Viewpoint Vista or similar) and HCM platforms (Workday)
- Dbt, BigQuery, and modern data stack experience
- Experience standing up internal-facing applications with enterprise auth (Entra ID / OIDC)
- A track record of getting non-technical people to adopt new tools — adoption is harder than building
Company Overview