Staff Applied AI Engineer

About the role

Forward Financing is hiring a Staff Applied AI Engineer for its Technology organization. The role focuses on architecting and building systems, tools and agents that use existing foundation models to deliver practical AI-powered solutions. It sits in a fast-moving innovation environment centered on experimentation, system design, scalability and integration of AI services across the company’s technology stack.

Key responsibilities

• Translate high-level business problems into end-to-end AI-enabled technical solutions.
• Design, build and maintain backend services and APIs that deploy or integrate AI-powered features using foundation-model providers.
• Build scalable, reliable backend architecture for AI workflows, automation and data-processing pipelines.
• Integrate AI services with microservices, AWS infrastructure and data systems including Snowflake.
• Create experimentation frameworks that support rapid test-and-learn cycles and iterative deployment.
• Collaborate with product managers, data scientists and front-end engineers to translate needs into implementations.
• Evaluate AI frameworks, services and tools and guide technical adoption decisions.
• Document system designs, APIs, workflows and integration patterns for operational continuity.

Required skills and experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related technical discipline.
• Strong backend software-engineering experience; Python is preferred, with Ruby or Go considered useful.
• Demonstrated ability to design scalable backend systems, APIs and distributed services.
• Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure, container orchestration and deployment pipelines.
• Knowledge of foundation-model providers, AI APIs, data pipelines and orchestration frameworks.
• Practical experience integrating third-party AI services into complex environments.
• Strong problem solving, rapid prototyping and communication skills.

Preferred experience

• AWS Bedrock, LangChain, vector databases or similar AI orchestration tools.
• Automation, knowledge systems and backend optimization for AI-driven processes.
• Responsible-AI, data-privacy and reliability considerations.
• Real-time or near-real-time AI application backends.

Location and compensation

• Remote position in Ontario, Canada.
• Full-time, Technology department.
• Target base salary: $180,000–$240,000 CAD.
• Annual target bonus: 12%.

The posting advertises medical, dental and vision coverage, flexible time off, paid parental leave, RRSP matching, wellness reimbursement, volunteer days, annual professional-development budget and charitable donation matching.

Public referral note

This role is currently listed on Forward Financing’s External Referral Program board. The referral payment is $2,500 USD after an eligible hire completes 90 consecutive days of employment. The person receiving the reward must meet Forward’s U.S.-resident eligibility rule.