AI Engineer

Dechert, LLP is a global specialist law firm focused on high end legal work. The AI Engineer partners directly with attorneys, legal professionals, and business-services teams to identify, design, build, and deploy secure AI-enabled solutions that improve the delivery of legal services and firm operations. This role operates at the intersection of business discovery, rapid application development, artificial intelligence, automation, and enterprise technology.
The role translates complex legal and operational needs into practical, scalable solutions—including generative AI applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions, workflow automations, intelligent agents, integrations, and custom web applications.
The position is part of the IT Applications rapid-development function and is responsible for moving high-value opportunities from idea through proof of concept, pilot, production readiness, and transition to the appropriate enterprise applications, platform, or operations team for long-term support. The engineer works within the firm’s security, privacy, data governance, architecture, and AI-risk-management standards.

Job Description

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

• Partner with attorneys, practice groups, legal project management, knowledge management, finance, risk, client development, and business-services teams to understand workflows, pain points, and desired outcomes.
• Facilitate technical discovery sessions; assess business problems for AI, automation, workflow, integration, and custom application opportunities.
• Rapidly design and develop proof-of-concept and pilot solutions using approved AI platforms, APIs, low-code tools, workflow automation platforms, and custom development technologies.
• Build secure AI-enabled applications, including generative AI assistants, document and knowledge-search solutions, RAG applications, workflow copilots, intelligent agents, and decision-support tools.
• Develop and maintain integrations among firm applications, document repositories, knowledge systems, data platforms, collaboration tools, and approved third-party services.
• Design AI solutions that appropriately address data classification, confidentiality, ethical use, model limitations, human review, auditability, access controls, retention, and regulatory obligations.
• Work with enterprise solutions architecture, information security, privacy, records management, risk management, and legal teams to ensure solutions meet global firm standards before production deployment.
• Evaluate and select appropriate technical approaches based on business value, solution complexity, data sensitivity, scalability, supportability, and time-to-value.
• Develop reusable components, integration patterns, prompt libraries, evaluation methods, documentation, and technical standards that accelerate future AI and automation delivery.
• Conduct testing, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, model evaluation, and performance monitoring for AI-enabled solutions.
• Establish solution success measures, such as time saved, adoption, accuracy, user satisfaction, process-cycle reduction, risk reduction, and business impact.
• Create technical documentation, architecture diagrams, support materials, operating procedures, and knowledge-transfer artifacts.
• Transition mature solutions to the appropriate applications support and operations or enterprise application development, ensuring clear ownership, support readiness, and lifecycle plans.
• Monitor deployed solutions for performance, reliability, adoption, model behavior, security concerns, and opportunities for iterative improvement.
• Stay current on AI engineering practices, legal-industry AI use cases, emerging tools, AI governance requirements, and applicable technology trends.
• Participate in intake prioritization, solution estimation, roadmap planning, vendor evaluations, and innovation portfolio reporting.
• Partner with Legal, Risk, Security, and Compliance Teams to ensure AI initiatives meet applicable legal and regulatory obligations.
• Ensure AI systems handling client or confidential information meet applicable privacy, security, and data handling requirements across all operating jurisdictions.
• Other responsibilities as needed.

KNOWLEDGE:

• Experience with Generative AI, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Azure/OpenAI, Large Language Model (LLM), Microsoft CoPilot, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector databases, AI agents, model evaluation, and responsible AI practices.
• Application development concepts, including APIs, microservices, web applications, databases, authentication, authorization, logging, monitoring, testing, and CI/CD practices.
• Cloud and enterprise technology environments, including secure API integration, DevOps, identity and access management, data governance, and application lifecycle management.
• Automation and orchestration technologies, such as workflow platforms, robotic process automation, low-code/no-code development tools, and integration platforms.
• Data privacy, confidentiality, information security, records retention, and risk considerations applicable to professional-services or legal environments.
• Software development methodologies, including Agile, Kanban, rapid prototyping, product discovery, and iterative delivery.
• Legal-industry workflows and systems is preferred, including document management, knowledge management, time and billing, matter management, legal research, e-discovery, client intake, and financial systems.

SKILLS:

• Strong software engineering skills in one or more modern programming languages, such as Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, ASP.NET Core, SQL, or similar technologies.
• Ability to build and deploy AI-enabled applications using APIs, SDKs, orchestration frameworks, cloud services, and enterprise platforms.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business needs into clearly defined user stories, technical requirements, solution designs, and delivery plans.
• Strong consultative and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with attorneys, senior business leaders, technical teams, vendors, and nontechnical users.
• Ability to explain AI capabilities, limitations, risks, and recommended controls in clear, practical language.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and systems-thinking abilities.
• Ability to balance speed and experimentation with security, quality, governance, maintainability, and long-term supportability.
• Experience designing user-centered solutions and incorporating feedback into rapid iterations.
• Strong organization and prioritization skills in a fast-moving environment with multiple concurrent initiatives.
• Knowledge of responsible AI frameworks such as React and emerging international AI regulations.

INTERESTS:

• Genuine curiosity about applying AI to meaningful legal, client-service, and business-operations challenges.
• Interest in working directly with end users and seeing solutions through from discovery to measurable adoption.
• Interest in responsible AI, data protection, human-centered design, and practical technology governance.
• Enthusiasm for experimentation, continuous learning, emerging technologies, and building reusable enterprise capabilities.
• Interest in improving how attorneys and professional-services teams access knowledge, complete work, collaborate, and serve clients.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical discipline required; equivalent combination of education, training, and relevant experience may be considered.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in software engineering, application development, automation, systems integration, data engineering, or related technical roles.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience designing, developing, or deploying AI-enabled, machine-learning, generative AI, automation, or intelligent workflow solutions preferred.
• Experience building applications using large language model APIs, RAG architectures, AI orchestration frameworks, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Azure/OpenAI, vector search technologies, or agentic workflow patterns strongly preferred.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services⁠.
• Experience with enterprise integrations, APIs, identity and access management, secure development practices, and application lifecycle management required.
• Experience in a law firm, legal technology provider, consulting firm, financial-services organization, or other regulated professional-services environment strongly preferred.
• Experience working with cross-functional stakeholders and delivering technology solutions from discovery through production deployment required.
• Relevant certifications in cloud engineering, AI, software development, security, automation, Agile delivery, or legal technology are preferred but not required.

Additional Job Description

Location(s)

Philadelphia

Time Type

Full time

Dechert LLP is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination.  The Firm prohibits unlawful discrimination in any term or condition of employment against any employee or applicant for employment because of the individual’s race, color, creed, religion, sex, age, marital status, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, disability, membership or service in the armed forces, or any other characteristic protected by law.