Sr AI Language Model Engineer

We are looking for an experienced and innovative individual contributor to fill the position of AI Language Model Engineer within our AI Center of Excellence group based in Houston, TX. Essential Job ResponsibilitiesEnd-to-end design, research, development, and deployment of language engineering use cases, with continuous client engagement and collaboration.Hands-on development in a shared codebase with the team. Back-end engineering with AWS, Terraform, etc. Working front-end proficiency when needed.Design workflows for language model deployment. Perform prompt engineering, pre-processing, and post-processing to optimize output suitability.Fine-tune and optimize multi-agentic systems to satisfy use case requirements.Work with domain experts to assess model quality.Qualifications:PhD in Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.Very strong proficiency in Python, with hands-on experience using version control systems.Strong foundation in large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP), with practical experience demonstrated through GitHub repositories, research publications, or a portfolio.Familiarity with modern NLP/LLM frameworks and libraries such as LangChain, LangGraph, Hugging Face Transformers, and vector databases.Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), multi-agentic systems, and agentic frameworks (e.g., Strands Agents SDK), with the ability to design, build, and deploy end-to-end AI agents and orchestration pipelines.Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS (EC2, S3, SageMaker, Bedrock, etc.) through projects.Strong communication skills for collaborating with teams and presenting technical results.Additional Desired Qualifications:Familiarity with any front-end development (e.g., React) to build user-facing applications.Ability to end-to-end develop and deploy full-stack applications — from data ingestion and model development through back-end APIs to front-end interfaces — in addition to the core data science and ML work.Experience with database systems (SQL and/or NoSQL) and data pipeline orchestration tools (e.g., Step Functions).Experience working in fast-paced, startup-like, or R&D-heavy environments.Occidental does not offer sponsorship of employment-based nonimmigrant visa petitions for this role.