Senior AI Engineer

Company Description

Assent is the leading solution for supply chain sustainability tailored for the world's top-tier, sustainability-driven manufacturers. Hidden risks riddle supply chains, many of which weren't built with sustainability in mind. That's where we step in. With insights from experts, Assent is the tool manufacturers trust for comprehensive sustainability.

We are proud to announce that Assent has crossed the US$100M ARR milestone, granting us Centaur Status. This accomplishment, reached just 8 years following our Series A, makes us the first and only Certified B Corporation in North America's SaaS sustainability industry to celebrate this milestone.

Our journey from $5 million to US$100M ARR in just eight years has been marked by significant growth and achievements. With our $350 million US funding led by Vista Equity Partners, we're poised for even greater expansion and are on the lookout for outstanding team members to join our mission.

Hybrid Work Model

At Assent, we proudly embrace a remote-first work model, valuing the flexibility and autonomy it provides our team. We also acknowledge the intangible benefits of occasional in-person workdays. For team members situated within 50 kms/31 miles of our five global offices in Ottawa, Eldoret, Penang, Columbus, Pune and Amsterdam, you can expect to come into the office 1-3 days a week. Similarly, those near our co-working spaces in Nairobi and Toronto are encouraged to work onsite once a month.

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced Senior AI Engineer with deep expertise in designing and building advanced AI/ML systems, Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agent-based architectures. This role is ideal for a highly skilled technologist with 10+ years of software development experience (including 3+ years in AI/ML) who thrives at the intersection of systems engineering, cloud infrastructure, and cutting-edge AI and machine learning applications.

As a Senior AI Engineer, you will architect, implement, and optimize AI-driven solutions for enterprise-scale environments. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional engineering, product, and research teams to integrate intelligent features into products and services. You will also play a key role in operationalizing AI systems, ensuring reliability, security, and performance at scale.

The Senior AI Engineer is a systems-oriented innovator who is passionate about building reliable AI platforms, pushing the boundaries of applied AI, and driving measurable business value through innovation.

Key Requirements & Responsibilities

• Design and Develop AI Systems: Design, build, and optimize advanced AI solutions including LLMs, RAG pipelines, and agent-based architectures.
• Operationalize AI Agents: Deploy, orchestrate, and manage multi-agent systems for enterprise-scale use cases, leveraging standards and frameworks like MCP, LangChain Agents, CrewAI, AutoGen, or A2A/ADK.
• Agent Lifecycle Management: Establish practices for agent state management, role coordination, monitoring, retraining, and rollback to ensure reliability and accountability.
• Autonomy Guardrails: Implement policies, controls, and observability to bound agent behavior, prevent runaway actions, and align with Responsible AI standards.
• Integration Architecture: Connect agents with APIs, microservices, and message-driven systems to orchestrate seamless collaboration across agents, humans, and enterprise services.
• Responsible AI & Security: Apply governance, fairness, security, and compliance controls to ensure safe, ethical, and regulatory-aligned agent operations.
• Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner with product managers, designers, and engineers to co-create AI features that deliver business value and improve user experience.
• Drive Continuous Innovation: Stay ahead of emerging trends in AI engineering, evaluate and adopt emerging tools/frameworks to strengthen the AI platform strategy.
• Be familiar with corporate security policies and follow the guidance set out by processes and procedures of Assent.

Qualifications

We strongly value your talent, energy and passion. It will also be valuable to Assent if you have the following qualifications

• Master's or Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering.
• Industry Experience: 8+ years of professional software development, including 3+ years in AI/ML systems (LLMs, RAG, agent-based architectures).
• Programming Excellence: Expert-level coding skills in Python, C# and Angular/JavaScript, and experience with coding assistants.
• Agentic AI Tooling: Hands-on experience with standards and frameworks such as MCP, A2A/ADK, LangChain, CrewAI, and AutoGen.
• Cloud Expertise: Strong working knowledge of AWS (preferred), Azure, or GCP; comfort with cloud-native services for LLM workloads.
• Systems Thinking: Deep understanding of event-driven architectures, distributed systems, message brokers (Kafka, Rabbitmq, Solace PubSub+), and microservices.
• DevOps Fluency: Familiarity with CI/CD, Docker, and infrastructure-as-code; able to collaborate with DevOps teams to ensure scalable and reliable agent operations.
• Responsible AI Awareness: Understanding of AI security, fairness, governance, and compliance frameworks.
• Product Orientation: Ability to translate business challenges into AI/ML solutions, define use cases, and engage in early-stage ideation and problem-solving.
• Collaboration & Communication: Strong ability to engage with cross-functional teams, influencing product direction while articulating technical trade-offs.
• Innovation Mindset: Curiosity and passion for applying emerging AI/ML techniques to enterprise integration challenges.

Additional Information

Life at Assent

Wellness: We believe that you and your family's well being is important. As a result, we offer vacation time that increases with tenure, comprehensive benefits packages (details vary by country), life leave days and more.

Financial Benefits: It's not all about the money – well, it's a little about the money. We understand that financial health is important and we offer a competitive base salary, a corporate bonus program, retirement savings options and more.

Life at Assent: There is purpose beyond your work. We provide our team members with flexible work options, volunteer days and opportunities to get involved in corporate giving initiatives.

Lifelong Learning: At Assent, curiosity is not only valued but encouraged. You will receive professional development days that are available to you the day you start.

At Assent, we are committed to growing and sustaining an environment where our team members feel included, valued, and heard. Our diversity and equal opportunity practices are guided and championed by our Diversity and Inclusion Working Group and our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs).

Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion includes recruiting and retaining team members from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and fostering a culture of belonging where all team members are included, treated with dignity and respect, promoted on their merits, and placed in positions to contribute to business success.

If you require assistance or accommodation throughout any part of the interview and selection process, please contact and we will be happy to help.