Associate AI Engineer

About the role

The Associate Engineer, AI Modeling at T-Mobile is instrumental in supporting the development and optimization of AI models that enhance customer service automation. This role involves applying techniques such as prompt engineering and fine-tuning to improve AI performance. The Associate Engineer collaborates with cross-functional teams to integrate AI-driven enhancements into production systems, thereby improving customer interactions and satisfaction. By contributing to the architecture of sophisticated AI systems, this role supports the strategic enhancement of T-Mobile's AI capabilities. Overall, the Associate Engineer plays a key role in ensuring the reliability, accuracy, and efficiency of AI applications in customer service operations.

Responsibilities

• Assist in building agentic AI systems that accomplish complex tasks by invoking Generative AI models as well as internal and third-party tools using APIs
• Support optimization of AI system performance through prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning
• Develop and maintain supporting software components, scripts, and pipelines to enable AI model deployment, testing, evaluation, and monitoring
• Assist in implementing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques to ensure AI responses are contextually accurate and grounded in real-time data
• Collaborate with senior AI engineers, backend engineers, business experts, and conversation designers to integrate AI-driven solutions into production environments
• Stay up-to-date with latest LLM advancements in prompt design, few-shot learning, tool integration protocols like MCP and AI orchestration frameworks like Agent SDK
• Help define and track success metrics aligned with business requirements and contribute to improving model quality
• Participate in other duties or projects as assigned

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Familiarity with LLM fine-tuning and prompt engineering (e.g., OpenAI APIs, Hugging Face, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini)
• Exposure to AI orchestration tools such as LangChain, LlamaIndex, and vector databases for retrieval augmented generation
• Basic knowledge of function calling and API-based reasoning models to support automated workflows
• Proficiency in Python and willingness to learn AI development frameworks
• Understanding of multi-agent systems and agentic AI concepts
• Experience with AI evaluation techniques, including test sets, synthetic data generation, and interactive testing
• Strong collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills; ability to work with cross-functional teams
• Familiarity with Agile development environments to facilitate rapid AI prototyping and iterations

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Exposure to customer service AI applications and intent-driven automation
• Familiarity with RAG pipelines and vector database retrieval concepts
• Knowledge of AI middleware development and API integration basics
• Awareness of cloud AI platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and scalable AI system architectures

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field required
• Master’s degree preferred but not mandatory

Pay

Total Target Cash Earnings Opportunity: $88,990 – $160,710

National Base Pay Range: $80,900 – $146,100

The Total Target Cash Earnings Opportunity represents the expected total cash compensation for this role at target performance, combining base salary and annual incentive opportunity. Actual earnings may be higher or lower depending on individual performance and overall company results. The base pay range reflects the compensation component of this opportunity. The candidate’s actual pay will be based on various factors, such as work location, qualifications, and experience, so the actual starting pay will vary within this range.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Flexible spending account
• 401(k) with employee stock grants and employee stock purchase plan
• Paid time off and up to 12 paid holidays (about 4 weeks for new full-time employees and about 2.5 weeks for new part-time employees annually)
• Paid parental and family leave
• Family building benefits and back-up care
• Enhanced family support and childcare subsidy
• Tuition assistance and college coaching
• Short- and long-term disability, voluntary AD&D coverage, voluntary accident coverage, voluntary life insurance, voluntary disability insurance, and voluntary long-term care insurance
• Mobile service and home internet discounts
• Pet insurance and access to commuter and transit programs