[Remote] Principal Consultant, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engineer
Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. Pioneer Management Consulting is a company focused on solving complex problems and shaping strategies for executive teams. They are seeking a Principal Consultant, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engineer to lead the design, development, and deployment of AI and ML solutions, while serving as a trusted advisor to clients and managing project teams.
Responsibilities
- Serve as a client-facing leader on AI engagements - advising executive stakeholders on AI strategy, capability roadmaps, build vs. buy decisions, platform selection, and adoption, while translating ambitious business goals into pragmatic, sequenced AI investment plans
- Lead the end-to-end design, development, and deployment of AI and ML solutions for clients - including classical machine learning models, agentic AI systems, chatbots, custom copilots, and RAG-based applications - primarily on Azure, with working fluency in AWS or GCP as needed
- Architect and build solutions hands-on across modern data platforms (Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake) and AI services; own design across data pipelines, model development and deployment, prompt and agent design, vector retrieval, integration, security, and responsible AI - ensuring solutions are intuitive, scalable, and production-ready
- Integrate AI applications with enterprise data sources, CRM systems, operational platforms, and APIs (REST, GraphQL) ensuring solutions are robust, secure, governed, and sustainable at scale
- Rapidly deliver POCs and MVPs to validate ideas and assumptions using agile development approaches, and build reusable accelerators and reference architectures that scale across engagements
- Coach clients and Pioneer team members on AI capabilities, drive adoption of the tools you build, and mentor consultants — collaborating with strategists, developers, and change practitioners to deliver cohesive, responsibly-designed AI systems
- Lead client engagements end to end - managing project teams, owning delivery and quality, navigating executive stakeholders, and bringing the consulting rigor and structured problem-solving that Pioneer is known for
- Help grow Pioneer’s AI practice by contributing to thought leadership, points of view, account growth, and the development of repeatable offerings; stay ahead of evolving AI technologies, Copilot extensions, LLM advancements, and responsible AI best practices
Skills
- 7+ years in consulting, data engineering, analytics, or AI solution delivery, with proven ownership of client-facing technical workstreams, production-ready AI/ML outcomes, and experience leading engagements and managing project teams
- Strong hands-on development in Python, with deep experience in data transformation, modeling, and machine learning; SQL familiarity is a plus but not required
- Hands-on experience with modern data platforms — Databricks and/or Microsoft Fabric strongly preferred, Snowflake also valued — including building data pipelines and supporting AI/ML workloads on top of them
- Hands-on experience in a major hyperscaler — Azure strongly preferred (including Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, and related AI services); AWS or GCP experience also acceptable
- Proven experience designing and implementing RAG and agentic/multi-agent architectures, including prompt engineering, tool calling, and structured outputs; working knowledge of vector databases (e.g., Azure AI Search, pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate) and LLM lifecycle concerns (evaluation, versioning, monitoring, cost)
- Proven experience developing and deploying custom AI and ML solutions in production environments, including model training, evaluation, versioning, monitoring, and inference; solid ML fundamentals (feature engineering, model selection, pipelines) with hands-on experience using frameworks such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, or MLflow
- Strong consulting presence: prior management consulting experience, with the ability to translate ambiguous business problems into clear technical designs, facilitate working sessions with senior stakeholders, and lead engagements and technical teams
- Proficiency with AI-native development environments and IDE agent platforms such as Cursor, Claude Desktop, or equivalent tools; demonstrated use of these environments to accelerate code authoring, refactoring, and solution delivery
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices for AI/ML workloads (e.g., automated testing, deployment pipelines, model lifecycle management in production)
- Hands-on experience with low-code and no-code AI tools (e.g., Microsoft Copilot, Claude Desktop, Copilot Studio) to prototype, augment, and accelerate solution delivery alongside traditional development
- Experience with master data and/or ERP systems (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Dynamics 365, NetSuite)
- Familiarity with AI capabilities embedded in enterprise platforms (e.g., Salesforce Einstein, Dynamics 365 Copilots, ServiceNow AI)
- Power Platform and Copilot Studio experience (custom copilots, plugins, connectors)
- Background in regulated or asset-intensive industries (utilities, energy, manufacturing, financial services)
- Prior contribution to AI strategy or enterprise AI enablement
- SQL experience for data transformation and analytics
Benefits
- Bonuses and other incentives are awarded at the Company’s discretion and are based upon individual contributions and overall company performance.
- Pioneer is proud to offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes meaningful time off and paid holidays, parental leave, 401(k) including employer match, tuition reimbursement, and a broad range of health and welfare benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, long and short-term disability, etc.
Company Overview