Principal AI Engineer
(Atlanta: Full-time, Hybrid)
Fisher Phillips, a premier international labor and employment law firm, is seeking a Principal AI Product Engineer to join our newly formed AI group. Reporting to the Director of AI, this role will partner closely with legal practice groups, business departments, and technology teams to design and deliver production-grade generative AI solutions that enhance decision-making and operational efficiency. This includes building tools that support attorneys and department leaders in addressing complex business and compliance challenges.
This is a senior, hands-on engineering role responsible for owning the full lifecycle of solutions, including designing data pipelines, training and fine-tuning large language models, productionizing services, and partnering with legal stakeholders to shape the product roadmap.
Key Responsibilities
- Collaborate with the hands-on Director of AI to evaluate, implement, and integrate AI tools and services aligned with department and practice group needs.
- Lead the design, development, and deployment of end-to-end AI systems including RAG pipelines, fine-tuned LLMs, and agentic workflows that automate legal workflows
- Own MLOps: CI/CD, model evaluation, monitoring, A/B testing, and rollback strategies
- Collaborate with attorneys and technical managers to translate legal requirements into technical roadmaps and rapid prototypes.
- Design and secure ingestion of privileged data sets; implement vector databases and retrieval strategies that respect confidentiality and compliance.
- Establish coding standards, testing frameworks, and observability practices; mentor and upskill junior engineers as the team scales.
- Evaluate emerging Gen-AI tools, open-source models, and vendor offerings, providing technical guidance on build-vs-buy decisions.
- Develop scripts, connectors, and automation to bridge functionality gaps and integrate AI services with firm systems (e.g., document management, CRM, case management).
- Design and build prototypes, proof-of-concepts, and lightweight custom solutions to test AI capabilities in the firm’s environment.
- Work with APIs and SDKs to enable interoperability between AI platforms and internal systems.
- Assist with technical assessments of AI vendors and services, providing insight into integration feasibility, scalability, and security.
- Support pilots and early adoption efforts by providing technical troubleshooting and ensuring solutions are production ready.
- Stay informed about emerging AI technologies, APIs, and services relevant to professional services and legal industry applications.
- Document solution architectures, integration approaches, and operational procedures for deployed AI solutions.
- Act as a technical partner to the Director of AI, translating strategic AI initiatives into actionable technical solutions.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field—or equivalent professional experience.
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 3+ years building and shipping ML/AI systems in production.
- Expert level Python (3.10+) and deep experience with one DL stack (PyTorch or TensorFlow/Keras) and modern Gen-AI tooling (Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain/LlamaIndex, RAG, fine-tuning, RLHF).
- Hands-on cloud proficiency with AWS or GCP, including container orchestration (EKS/ECS, GKE), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform/CloudFormation), and GPU/accelerator workloads.
- Comfortable designing APIs, microservices, and event-driven architectures; fluent working with REST, GraphQL, and gRPC.
- Strong product instincts: proven ability to interview end-users, articulate problem statements, and balance ROI vs. model accuracy.
- Bonus: experience handling regulated or privileged corpora (legal, healthcare, finance) and implementing data-privacy controls.
- Proficiency in Python for scripting, automation, and API integration.
- Hands-on experience working with REST APIs, webhooks, and SDKs.
- Experience configuring and deploying cloud-based AI services or SaaS platforms.
- Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to work independently to research, test, and implement solutions.
- Ability to translate business needs into technical requirements and deliver solutions that align with firm objectives.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills to work with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Why Join Us
At Fisher Phillips, we recognize that exceptional talent is the foundation of our success, enabling us to deliver outstanding service to both our internal and external clients. Joining our team means collaborating in a professional yet dynamic environment that leverages cutting-edge technology. Our leadership is committed to fostering your professional growth and providing opportunities to challenge yourself in meaningful ways.
We believe in rewarding talent with more than just a competitive salary. Our comprehensive benefits package includes health, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) with profit sharing, sick leave per Seattle law, and 15 days of paid time off and 10 paid holidays per benefit year.
Your well-being is our priority. We offer 24/7 telehealth services, a variety of wellness programs, and additional optional benefits designed to support your unique lifestyle. At Fisher Phillips, you’ll find a workplace that values your health, happiness, and continued professional development. To learn more about our firm, visit us at www.fisherphillips.com.
Equal Opportunity Employer
Fisher Phillips is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including related medical conditions), gender, sexual orientation, national origin, citizenship status, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, age, disability, or any other protected status, in compliance with all applicable laws.
The statements in this position description are not necessarily all-inclusive. Additional duties and responsibilities may be assigned, and requirements may vary from time to time.
Relocation costs are not covered. We are only accepting direct applicants; third-party recruiters or agencies will not be considered. No phone inquiries, please.
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What We Do
The attorneys at Fisher Phillips are committed to providing value to our clients. We do one thing - represent employers in labor and employment matters. Our clients know their legal problems will be treated as business problems and that we strive to help them avoid legal problems. We believe the lawsuit that’s never filed is a better win for a client than a costly defense verdict. Although skilled and tenacious advocates, our attorneys recognize that the most aggressive and expensive approach may not always be the best solution to a client's problem. We seek to identify the client's primary business objective, design a solution to fit the objective, and implement that solution in the most efficient manner possible. By performing compliance audits, providing the right policies, procedures and training, and offering thoughtful advice and counsel, we assist clients in preventing employee claims and lawsuits, government investigations, and union organizing activity. We’re in the client service business and know that many labor and employment problems arise without much warning and require an immediate response. We meet deadlines and provide plenty of advance time where client review of documents is needed. And we communicate with our clients in plain English. Founded in Atlanta, we're national with 37 offices and more than 500 attorneys. Our attorneys practice before state and federal courts and administrative agencies in virtually every state.
