About Careertakes

👉 Important disclosure: Careertakes is a third-party recruiting platform supporting this hiring process. If selected, you will be employed directly by our client, IT Services and IT Consulting.

Applicants for this role may also receive access to additional matched opportunities through the Careertakes platform.

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Overview

Confidential Client (via Careertakes) is hiring an Entry Level AI Software Engineer to help turn advances in large language models (LLMs) into reliable, production-ready features. In this role you will work with experienced engineers to design, prototype, test, and refine AI-powered capabilities that integrate LLMs, enterprise data, and developer tools. This is a full-time position based in Poughkeepsie, AR.

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What You’ll Do

• Design, build, and test AI-powered features that address real developer and client needs with guidance from senior engineers.
• Integrate LLMs, APIs, and enterprise data into applications — explore agent workflows, tool-calling, and retrieval-augmented approaches where appropriate.
• Write clear specifications, craft effective prompts, and use AI development tools thoughtfully; review and test AI-generated code and outputs.
• Evaluate AI behavior using realistic test cases; measure quality, performance, and handle incorrect outputs and failure modes.
• Debug across model interactions, application code, APIs, and underlying systems to identify root causes and improve reliability.
• Collaborate via Git, participate in code reviews and technical discussions, document work, and iterate on feedback.

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Minimum Qualifications

• Strong software engineering fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, software design, and testing.
• Proficiency in Python and experience building applications or services that integrate APIs.
• Hands-on experience building an application or working prototype with LLMs (personal, academic, open-source, or internship projects). Be prepared to explain integration and testing approaches.
• A systematic debugging mindset: investigate failures, test assumptions, and reason about interactions between code, data, and models.
• Ability to translate problems into clear requirements, prompts, and testable acceptance criteria.
• Familiarity with Git and clear technical communication; ability to learn quickly and collaborate on a team.
• Bachelor’s degree (preferred).

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Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI agents, tool or function calling, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, or vector databases.
• Independent AI projects, open-source contributions, or experiments demonstrating initiative and engineering judgment.
• Additional programming experience in JavaScript/TypeScript or Go.
• Familiarity with distributed systems, microservices, or operating system concepts (concurrency, multithreading, memory management).
• Experience with relational databases and SQL.
• Exposure to cloud and container technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, or OpenShift.
• Familiarity with observability, search, or real-time data tools (e.g., OpenSearch, Kafka).
• Experience in AI evaluation, anomaly detection, or improving model accuracy, latency, and reliability.

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Salary & Benefits

• Base salary range: $100,800 — $151,200 per year (range provided by Confidential Client).
• Competitive benefits and professional development opportunities through Confidential Client (details provided to candidates during the hiring process).
• Reasonable accommodations are available for applicants with disabilities; please let us know if you need assistance during the hiring process.

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Location & Employment Type

• Location: Poughkeepsie, AR, USA (on-site or as assigned by Confidential Client).
• Employment Type: FULL_TIME

Confidential Client (via Careertakes) may consider candidates for other applicable locations associated with this requisition; applicants agree to be considered for the location where they are ultimately assigned.

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Equal Opportunity & Hiring Transparency

Careertakes and our client are Equal Opportunity Employers committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. We prohibit discrimination or harassment of any kind. To support a fair and efficient hiring process, AI tools may be used to assist with application review or resume screening. These tools do not replace human decision-making. Final hiring decisions are made by people.

If you have questions about how your data is used, please contact us directly.