Software Developer Specialist – AI/ML Engineering | Austin, TX Hybrid | 8+ Years Cloud Platform Experience

**Location:** Austin, Texas **Duration:** 1 year (with two optional 1-year renewals) **Hours:** Monday–Friday, 8:00 AM–5:00 PM; up to 2,080 hours annually; may require evenings/weekends **Overview** A Texas state agency seeks a Software Developer Specialist to advance AI initiatives by transforming proof-of-concept solutions into scalable, production-ready web applications supporting transportation engineering workflows. The role focuses on engineering-related software services including model ingestion, automated quantity extraction, plan conformance checks, and CI/CD automation. The specialist will extend early-stage AI models and prototypes—such as those supporting plan review automation, roadway asset detection, and digital delivery—into fully integrated applications accessible through secure, user-friendly web interfaces across the enterprise. **Key Responsibilities** - Develop and deploy production-ready AI/ML applications from proof-of-concept prototypes - Build scalable web applications supporting transportation engineering workflows - Implement model ingestion, automated quantity extraction, and plan conformance checks - Design and maintain CI/CD automation pipelines - Deploy and manage ML workloads across multiple cloud platforms - Integrate AI models into secure, enterprise-accessible web interfaces - Support plan review automation, roadway asset detection, and digital delivery initiatives **Required Qualifications** - 8+ years of experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, or OCI) for deploying and managing ML workloads across Azure AI, AWS SageMaker/Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI, and OCI AI Services - 8+ years of DevOps experience with Ansible, CI/CD, Docker, and Kubernetes - 8+ years of database experience with SQL (PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL/vector databases - 8+ years proficient in both Bash and PowerShell scripting for automation - 8+ years of CI/CD experience with Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar automation pipelines - 5+ years of production Python experience as primary language - 3+ years of NLP/LLM experience with transformers (BERT, GPT, T5), RAG systems, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, or building LLM applications - 3+ years of time series experience with forecasting models, anomaly detection, sequential data modeling, or real-time monitoring systems - 3+ years of recommender systems experience with collaborative filtering, ranking models, personalization engines, or content recommendations - 3+ years of production MLOps experience with MLflow, Weights & Biases, Kubeflow, Airflow, or similar platforms - 3+ years of distributed training experience with large-scale model training, multi-GPU/multi-node setups, and efficient data parallelism - 3+ years of production computer vision experience with PyTorch/TensorFlow, OpenCV, YOLO, object detection, segmentation, or real-time inference - 3+ years of experience with feature stores (Feast, Tecton) or advanced feature engineering - 3+ years of model optimization experience with quantization, pruning, and knowledge distillation - 3+ years of experience with LLM models including Ollama, Huggingface, or other non-frontier models - 2+ years of AI/ML production experience having built and deployed 2-3+ ML models serving real users, not just experiments **Preferred Qualifications** - 1+ year of experience with Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and analyzing spatial data - 1+ year of prior experience in the transportation, logistics, or smart city sectors - 1+ year of background in computer vision (object detection, image segmentation) applied to infrastructure or vehicular data - 1+ year of familiarity with public sector data compliance, security, and governance standards - 1+ year of experience with the Unreal gaming engine and real-world digital twinning - 1+ year of experience with Google Maps Cesium API - 1+ year of experience with Polygonflow Dash and its capabilities **Work Location & Requirements** - Hybrid position requiring minimum four days per week onsite - Must pass statewide DPS, Texas and out-of-state county courthouse verification of criminal and sex offender background checks - Must be legally authorized to work in the United States throughout the engagement term - All travel, per diem, parking, and living expenses are at candidate's expense unless pre-approved in writing - Must report time in the designated timekeeping tool - May be required to work evenings, weekends, and holidays as needed