Lead AI Developer

Department: DS Operations

Location: St. Louis, MO

Compensation: $70 – $75 per hour

Employment Type: Contract

Who We Are
Welcome to TELUS Digital — where innovation drives impact at a global scale. As an award-winning digital product consultancy and the digital division of TELUS, one of Canada’s largest telecommunications providers, we design and deliver transformative customer experiences through cutting-edge technology, agile thinking, and a people-first culture.
With a global team across North America, South America, Central America, Europe, Africa, and APAC, we offer end-to-end expertise across various service offerings: Web, Mobile & Digital Marketing | Enterprise AI | Customer Care AI & Technology | Enterprise Technology Modernization
From mobile apps and websites to voice UI, chatbots, AI, customer service, and in-store solutions, TELUS Digital enables seamless, trusted, and digitally powered experiences that meet customers wherever they are — all backed by the secure infrastructure and scale of our multi-billion-dollar parent company.

About the Role

Job Summary

We are seeking an experienced AI Developer to design, develop, and deploy enterprise-grade AI solutions. The ideal candidate will have strong experience building Generative AI and LLM-based applications, integrating AI services into enterprise platforms, and developing scalable cloud-native applications. This role requires close collaboration with business stakeholders, architects, and engineering teams to deliver secure, production-ready AI solutions.

Required Skills

• 7+ years of software development experience.

• 2+ years of hands-on experience with Generative AI/LLM application development.

• Strong programming skills in Python (preferred) and/or Java.

• Experience with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or similar LLM platforms.

• Experience building AI applications using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, or LlamaIndex.

• Strong understanding of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), prompt engineering, vector databases, and AI agents.

• Experience developing REST APIs using FastAPI, Flask, Spring Boot, or similar frameworks.

• Experience with cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud.

• Knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and Git.

• Familiarity with SQL/NoSQL databases and vector databases (Pinecone, FAISS, ChromaDB, Weaviate, etc.).

• Strong debugging, analytical, and communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop AI-powered applications using Large Language Models (LLMs).

• Build and optimize RAG pipelines and AI agent workflows.

• Integrate AI services into enterprise applications and APIs.

• Develop scalable backend services for AI solutions.

• Collaborate with architects, product owners, and business stakeholders to define AI use cases.

• Optimize AI model performance, cost, and response quality.

• Ensure security, governance, and compliance for AI implementations.

• Participate in code reviews, testing, and production deployments.

• Document AI solutions and mentor junior developers when needed.