AI Conversation Engineer - Remote (Req. #752)

Founded in 1994 and celebrating 30 years in business, Mindex is a software development company with a rich history of demonstrated software and product development success. We specialize in agile software development, cloud professional services, and creating our own innovative products. We are proud to be recognized as the #1 Software Developer in the 2023 RBJ's Book of Lists and ranked 27th in Rochester Chamber’s Top 100 Companies. Additionally, we have maintained our certification as a Great Place to Work for consecutive years in a row. Our list of satisfied clients and #ROCstar employees are both rapidly growing— Are you next to join our team?

Mindex’s Software Development division is the go-to software developer for enterprise organizations looking to engage teams of skilled technical resources to help them plan, navigate, and execute through the full software development lifecycle.  

We are seeking a skilled AI Conversation Engineer to join our team.
The AI Conversation Engineer will design, architect, and implement robust conversational AI systems (chatbots, voice assistants, or virtual agents) that drive real business value across enterprise systems, with extensive use of Python, SQL, and modern data engineering frameworks.

Essential Functions:

• Define conversation flows and dialogue architectures to support multi-turn, context-aware, natural dialogs utlizing tools such as Dialogflow CX.
• Develop, write, and optimize prompts to guide large-language models (LLMs) or other generative models toward accurate, context-appropriate, safe outputs
• Fine-tune and/or adjust models (when applicable), including prompt tuning, fine-tuning, or parameter optimization, to align model behavior with product and user goals.
• Integrate conversational AI with existing backend systems via APIs and data pipelines; ensure seamless data flow, context handling, and retrieval when needed.
• Iterate on conversation design through testing: run A/B tests, user simulations, evaluate model outputs (with both automated metrics and human review), debug edge cases, and improve performance over time.
• Collaborate closely with product managers, UX / conversation designers, data engineers, and other stakeholders to define requirements, ensure ethical and safe model behavior, and deliver polished user experiences.
• Apply MLOps best practices to model versioning, testing, monitoring, and deployment.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, GitOps, GCP-native tools, Azure DevOps, and Jenkins is helpful.

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience preferred.

• 5 plus years of experience in software engineering with a strong focus on Python development and strong problem-solving skills
• Demonstrated experience in conversation architecture / design: defining dialogue flows, state/context management, branching logic, user experience considerations in conversational UI.
• Deep expertise in prompt engineering: writing, testing, and refining prompts to guide large language or generative models toward desired behavior, leveraging techniques like few-shot, zero-shot prompting, chain-of-thought, role prompting, or context conditioning.
• Experience with model tuning (prompt tuning, fine-tuning, hyperparameter adjustment) or otherwise optimizing model outputs to meet quality, safety, and reliability standards.
• Practical experience with at least one conversation / agent platform (e.g. Dialogflow preferred; or other chatbot/voice-bot platforms / agent frameworks). Ability to build, deploy, and maintain agents on such platforms.
• Experience with API integration; connecting the conversational agent to backend services, databases, or external APIs to fetch or store context, user data, or dynamic content.
• Solid conversation design experience; understanding of user-centered design, usability, natural language understanding / generation, user experience (UX) considerations, tone and style, context management, fallback and error handling.
• Strong communication skills, ability to collaborate across disciplines (product, design, engineering, data), and translate technical AI capabilities into user-facing solutions.
• Curiosity about latest developments in AI / NLP / LLMs, willingness to experiment, learn, and refine prompts / models / flows continually.

Physical Conditions/Requirements

• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer
• No heavy lifting is expected. Exertion of up to 10 lbs.

• Health insurance
• Paid holidays
• Flexible time off
• 401k retirement savings plan and company match with pre-tax and ROTH options
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Employer paid disability insurance
• Life insurance and AD&D insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Flexible spending accounts
• Health savings account with employer contributions
• Accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and legal assistance
• Adoption assistance
• Domestic partner coverage
  

Mindex Perks

• Tickets to local sporting events
• Teambuilding events
• Holiday and celebration parties
  

Professional Development

• Leadership training
• License to Udemy online training courses

• Growth opportunities
  

The band range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including, but not limited to, skill sets, education, experience, training, certifications, internal equity, and other business and organizational needs. It is not typical for an individual to be hired at, or near, the top of the range for their role; and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case.

The range for this role is $90,000 - $140,000.

Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor, or take over sponsorship of an employment Visa at this time.