AI Systems Integration Specialist Future Ready AI

Primary Purpose

The AI Systems Integration Specialist leads the analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance of AI-enabled systems and workflows (including agent-based automations) that support instruction, advising, and operational efficiency across Uplift Education. This role focuses on integrating AI tools with existing district platforms to ensure responsible, secure, and effective use of artificial intelligence in service of student outcomes and organizational capacity.

Key Responsibilities

• Carry out structured assessments of AI and agent-based AI use cases: evaluate fit, risk, value, and readiness, and recommend whether to build, buy, partner, or defer.

• Lead the integration of agent-based AI workflows with Uplift's instructional, advising, and operational systems.

• Evaluate and integrate AI features from existing district vendors, including coordinating data access, security review, and operational hooks into Uplift data.

• Cook up implementation across vendors, partners (including UTD/FIPSE collaborators), IT, and internal teams; build directly when it accelerates the work.

• Establish evaluation and monitoring practices for non-deterministic systems: eval frameworks, regression testing, observability tooling, and performance/cost tracking.

• Define and oversee guardrails for LLM-specific failure modes: hallucination, tool misuse, prompt injection, and data leakage.

• Serve as an internal evangelist for responsible AI adoption: translating capability and risk to instructional, advising, and operational stakeholders, and building shared literacy as the technology matures.

• Partner with Data and Information Security teams to ensure FERPA-compliant data handling, NIST-aligned AI risk practices, and ISO-conformant deployment.

• Document architectures, decisions, and operating procedures, so workflows remain maintainable beyond the grant period.

Education & Certification

• Bachelor's degree required in Computer Science, Information Systems, Data Engineering, or a related technical field; Master's preferred.
• Certifications in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), data integration, security, or AI/agent development a plus.

Experience

• Minimum 3–5 years of experience in information technology, systems integration, data engineering, analytics, or enterprise technology environments.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, or supporting system integrations, APIs, data pipelines, or automation workflows.
• Working knowledge of agent-based AI architectures and frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, native SDKs from Anthropic or OpenAI), with familiarity in tool-use / function-calling, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and emerging standards such as MCP (Model Context Protocol).
• Hands-on building experience is a plus but not required.
• Experience deploying or supporting AI workloads in compliance-bound environments (education, healthcare, finance, public sector) preferred or willingness to learn.
• Proven ability to collaborate across IT, data, and non-technical teams to deliver reliable, scalable technical solutions.

Skills & Attributes

• Strong systems-thinking and analytical judgment; able to translate ambiguous functional needs into reliable technical solutions.
• Excellent technical communication; can document architecture clearly, brief vendors and partners with precision, and explain agent behavior to non-technical stakeholders without losing technical depth.
• Comfortable serving as an internal champion - building shared understanding, coaching colleagues, and shifting culture toward responsible AI adoption or when human intervention is more appropriate.
• High attention to detail, reliability, and operational follow-through.
• Comfortable with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and working in a field that is still maturing; treats agentic systems as products requiring ongoing tuning rather than one-time deployments.
• Growth orientation. This role is intentionally designed to evolve as Uplift's AI strategy and the broader technology mature; the right candidate will see that trajectory as a feature, not a risk.

Communication Skills

• Required: Strong analytical, communication, and writing skills.
• Technology: Comfort with scripting (Python or equivalent) for prototyping, validation, and code review; willingness to build directly when it accelerates the work.
• Knowledge: Working knowledge of REST APIs, webhooks, async patterns, and workflow orchestration.
• Familiarity: Familiarity with secure secrets management, role-based access, and audit logging.
• Ability: Ability to evaluate vendor- and partner-built AI solutions against district requirements.

Physical Demands

• While performing the duties of this position, the employee is regularly required to sit and use the wrists, hands and/or fingers.
• The employee is occasionally required to stand, walk; climb or balance.
• The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.

Work Environment

• Dallas-Fort Worth district-wide travel required.
• Occasional prolonged and irregular hours required.
• Minimum in-office 3 days a week, including Campus.