Lead Search and AI Engineer at EPRI – Charlotte, North Carolina

Position Title: Lead Search and AI Engineer

Requisition ID: REQ-3852

Position Type: Full time

About Us: About UsTogether Shaping the Future of Energy

EPRI provides thought leadership, industry expertise, and collaborative value to help the electricity sector identify issues, technology gaps, and broader needs that can be addressed through effective research and development programs for the benefit of society.

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Job Title:Lead Search and AI EngineerLocation:Charlotte, NC, North Carolina Home OfficeJob Summary and Description:

The Lead AI Engineer is to design, implement, and support AI-driven document processing, retrieval, and search solutions using Azure AI Search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Knowledge Graphs, Query Orchestration, Prompt Engineering, and Kubernetes-based container deployments.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect & Deploy AI Solutions: Build AI-driven search and document intelligence systems using Azure AI Search, Knowledge Graphs, and RAG techniques.
• Query Orchestration: Develop strategies to route and structure user queries efficiently across multiple retrieval systems.
• RAG-Based Applications: Implement and fine-tune applications for intelligent knowledge retrieval from structured and unstructured documents.
• Containerized Deployments: Deploy and manage AI applications using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for scalability.
• Vector Search Optimization: Enhance document retrieval through optimized embeddings and hybrid search techniques.
• Open-Source Integration: Utilize tools like Tesseract OCR, PyMuPDF, and Pillow for document processing.
• API Integration: Connect with Profile APIs, Product Metadata, and Downloads to enrich indexing and search capabilities.
• Compliance & Security: Ensure adherence to export control restrictions and secure document handling best practices.
• Monitoring & Optimization: Troubleshoot and optimize AI-based workflows for performance and reliability.
• Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely with business and technical teams to refine AI-powered document solutions.

Required Skills & Experience

• Bachelors or Masters Degree in Computer Science or related areas, applicable professional certification with 7+ years of progressive experience providing solutions to complex program/system problems in a business environment in
• 5+ years in AI/ML, cloud-based search, and document processing.
• Expertise in Query Orchestration for complex AI pipelines.
• Strong knowledge of RAG architectures for AI-powered search.
• Hands-on experience with Azure AI Search, Document Intelligence, and Cognitive Services.
• Proficiency in vector search, embeddings, and hybrid retrieval techniques.
• Experience with Kubernetes (AKS) and containerized deployments.
• Familiarity with Tesseract OCR, PyMuPDF, and Pillow.
• Strong Python development skills for AI pipelines.

Specialized ExpertiseSearch & RAG

• Semantic, BM25, similar ranking and vector search optimization.
• Custom scoring profiles and relevance tuning.
• Evaluation metrics (nDCG, MRR, precision@k).
• Query rewriting, synonym maps, and semantic expansion.
• Integration with RAG and LLM pipelines for optimized context retrieval.

Prompt Engineering

• Systematic prompt design and evaluation.
• RAG-oriented prompting with grounding and guardrails.
• Instruction hierarchies and multi-agent orchestration.
• Domain adaptation for EPRI’s technical language.
• Continuous improvement through telemetry and quality analysis.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with hybrid cloud AI solutions (on-prem + cloud).
• Familiarity with Azure OpenAI, LangChain, or AI Foundry.
• Deep knowledge of multi-index query orchestration.
• Expertise in Azure AI search semantic and vector profiling.
• Expertise in vector other databases such as (FAISS, Weaviate, Pinecone).
• Background in NLP, document classification, and entity extraction.
• Understanding of export control compliance and secure document handling.

The salary range for this position is $145,000 USD to $175,000 USD annually.This salary range is an estimate, and the actual salary may vary based on various factors, including without limitation applicant's education, experience, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity and alignment with market data. The salary may also be adjusted based on applicant's geographic location.This role is eligible to participate in EPRI’s annual incentive program. The amount of incentive varies and is subject to the terms and conditions of the plan.This role is eligible to participate in EPRI’s standard employee benefit programs, which currently include the following: medical, dental, vision, 401k, STD/LTD and paid family leave, life and accident insurance, paid time off (flexible vacation, sick leave, and holiday pay).EPRI participates in E-Verify, an online system operated jointly by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration (SSA). EPRI uses the system to check the work status of new hires by comparing information from the employee's I-9 form against SSA and Department of Homeland Security databases.EPRI is an equal opportunity employer. EEO/AA/M/F/VETS/DisabledTogether . . . Shaping the Future of Energy.www.epri.com