The University of Toronto is seeking an AI Developer & Integration Specialist to join our team. Reporting to the Manager, AI Engineering & Operations, you will develop, customize, and integrate AI applications, models, and solutions into the University’s infrastructure and services. You will act as a bridge between AI research and practical, value-driven deployment.
What You'll Do
- Architect and engineer complex, university-wide AI solutions, designing custom Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines and autonomous agent workflows.
- Design and maintain robust MLOps and CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions/GitLab for model training, deployment, and versioning.
- Evaluate and select appropriate foundational models and hosting strategies, influencing cloud spend and computational resource efficiency.
- Act as the primary technical authority for AI security, implementing the OWASP Agentic AI framework to mitigate threats.
- Establish and enforce Model Context Protocol (MCP) standards for secure and standardized AI tool access to institutional data.
- Engineer complex authentication flows using OIDC, OAuth2, and SAML for AI agents.
- Conduct threat modeling for new AI integrations and serve as the gatekeeper for high-risk use cases.
- Establish the University’s observability standards for AI, implementing OpenTelemetry and tracing tools.
- Design rigorous evaluation frameworks to test models for accuracy, hallucination rates, and bias.
- Solve unprecedented technical challenges related to stochastic software behavior as the highest-level escalation point.
What We're Looking For
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Engineering, Data Science or acceptable combination of equivalent experience.
- Eight years or more of experience in software development.
- Three to five years of experience in software development with a specific focus on AI/ML, Large Language Models (LLMs), and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
- Demonstrated experience in developing and integrating AI/ML models in an enterprise environment.
- Experience developing and implementing the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
- Strong knowledge of authentication and authorization protocols, including OIDC, OAuth2, and SAML.
- Experience implementing observability and OpenTelemetry standards for Agentic platforms.
- Proficiency with LLMOps, tracing, and evaluation tools such as Langfuse or MLFlow.
- Familiarity with the OWASP frameworks and secure development best practices.
- Proficiency with CI/CD tooling for infrastructure delivery, such as GitHub, GitHub Actions, GitLab.
- Proven ability to evaluate, fine-tune, and optimize both open-source and vendor-provided AI models.
- High proficiency in Python, APIs, and common AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, HuggingFace, and LangChain.
- Experience supporting cloud-agnostic AI/ML platforms leveraging solutions such as Azure Foundry, AWS Bedrock, Ollama, or Vertex AI.
- Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and container engineering (Kubernetes/Docker).
- Strong understanding of AI ethics, data governance principles, and their application within an academic or public sector context.
- Excellent problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills.
Nice to Have
- Knowledge of data sovereignty and privacy regulations relevant to Canadian higher education.
- Contributions to open-source AI projects or active engagement in the AI engineering community.
- Experience with ITSM platforms (e.g., ServiceNow) and workflow automation.
Technical Stack
- Languages & Frameworks: Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, HuggingFace, LangChain
- CI/CD & DevOps: GitHub Actions, GitLab, Kubernetes, Docker
- Platforms: Azure AI Foundry, AWS Bedrock, Ollama, Vertex AI
- Observability & Tools: OpenTelemetry, Langfuse, MLFlow
Team & Environment
This role is part of the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions (EIS) group within Information Technology Services (ITS), reporting to the Manager, AI Engineering & Operations.
Benefits & Compensation
- Compensation: USW Pay Band 18 -- $116,547 with an annual step progression to a maximum of $149,043.
Work Mode
This is an onsite position located at our St. George (Downtown Toronto) campus.
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.
