AI Engineer

Join Dechert’s Innovation Lab, where AI-driven technology accelerates the delivery of legal services and streamlines firm operations. This onsite role in New York City places you at the intersection of law and technology, collaborating with attorneys and business teams to turn real-world needs into testable prototypes and pilots. You will help pioneer practical AI solutions, from discovery through early deployment, in a culture that values rigorous experimentation, measurable impact, and cross-functional partnership. Compensation for this role ranges from $140,000 to $175,000 per year, with actual pay determined by location, knowledge, skills, and experience.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with attorneys, practice groups, legal project management, knowledge management, finance, risk, client development, and business-services teams to identify innovation opportunities, map workflows, pain points, and desired outcomes.
• Lead technical discovery and innovation sessions; evaluate business problems for AI, automation, and emerging technologies.
• Rapidly design, build, and assess proof-of-concept and pilot solutions using approved and emerging AI platforms, APIs, low-code tools, workflow automation platforms, and custom development technologies.
• Develop and test experimental AI-enabled applications, including generative AI assistants, document and knowledge-search solutions, RAG applications, workflow copilots, intelligent agents, and decision-support tools.
• Choose appropriate technical approaches based on innovation potential, business value, solution complexity, data sensitivity, scalability, supportability, and time-to-value.
• Define and measure success metrics such as feasibility, time saved, adoption potential, accuracy, user satisfaction, process-cycle reduction, risk reduction, and business impact.
• Assess pilot outcomes and recommend transitioning successful experiments to the relevant enterprise application teams.
• Stay ahead of AI engineering practices, legal-industry AI use cases, emerging tools and platforms, governance requirements, and technology trends; propose new technologies for future evaluation.
• Participate in intake prioritization, solution estimation, innovation pipeline planning, vendor evaluations, and portfolio reporting.
• Undertake other duties as needed to advance the lab’s objectives.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical discipline.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in software engineering, application development, automation, systems integration, data engineering, rapid prototyping, or related technical roles.
• Experience working with cross-functional stakeholders and delivering technology solutions from discovery and experimentation through pilot and production deployment.

Technologies

• Python
• JavaScript / TypeScript
• C#
• ASP.NET Core
• SQL
• APIs, SDKs
• Orchestration frameworks, cloud services
• Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services
• OpenAI, Claude
• Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• LLM, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation
• Embeddings, vector databases
• AI agents, RAG architectures, vector search technologies
• Workflow platforms, robotic process automation
• Low-code / no-code development tools
• Integration platforms, microservices
• Web applications, databases
• Authentication, authorization
• Logging, monitoring, testing
• CI/CD practices

Location and schedule details: this full-time, onsite role is based in New York City. Additional posting information notes that salary ranges may vary by location, with related compensation determined by knowledge, skills, experience, and location. The listed salary range for comparable locations includes Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Locations: Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, D.C. | Time type: Full time