Applied AI Engineer

Clayco is building governed, production-grade AI that replaces ad-hoc document and retrieval workflows with reliable tools built on the company’s internal knowledge. As an Applied AI Engineer in St. Louis, MO (onsite), you will help ship retrieval and document intelligence for Clayco employees, bringing automation in line with how project teams actually work.

What you’ll be building

• Governed AI applications that reduce reliance on personal, one-off tools
• Retrieval over Clayco’s internal knowledge base, including procedures, training content, project history, and platform documentation
• Domain-model-driven retrieval boundaries that translate from design into working constraints
• Model and approach evaluation against real work, using Clayco tasks instead of relying on public benchmark performance
• Prompt and context engineering standards that future engineers can inherit and extend
• Implementation inside Clayco’s agent registry and identity model, rather than building around existing systems

How success is measured

You will be expected to ship capabilities that people depend on in real workflows. This is not framed as an impressive demo for a steering committee. You’ll validate retrieval and document intelligence by testing on real tasks, understanding where systems fail, and iterating based on those results.

Collaboration and execution

The role requires close partnership with the people who do the work. Expect to work alongside project engineers, including observing reviews of submittals and learning why “obvious automation” would be wrong in practice. You should be comfortable operating early in a pillar that is still being built, with architectural latitude and fewer people to consult than at more established teams.

Requirements

• Experience shipping to real users, with retrieval and document intelligence in production
• An honest evaluation mindset based on testing on real tasks and analyzing failure cases
• The ability to work effectively with project engineers and understand ground truth from actual work
• Comfort building early, with architectural latitude in an emerging pillar

Tech stack

• Snowflake
• Snowflake semantic layer
• Snowflake Cortex
• n8n

Benefits

• Discretionary Annual Bonus: subject to company and individual performance
• Comprehensive Benefits Package including medical, dental and vision plans, 401k, generous PTO and paid company holidays, employee assistance program, flexible spending accounts, life insurance, disability coverage, learning & development programs and more

Nice to have

• Construction or AEC background
• Snowflake Cortex
• n8n
• Document extraction at scale
• Experience consolidating shadow tooling into something supported

Additional details

• Clients and projects are nationwide, so travel is required
• This position is classified as a safety-sensitive role; candidates will be subject to a comprehensive background check including mandatory drug testing

Why Clayco

• 2025 Best Places to Work (St. Louis Business Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, Phoenix Business Journal)
• 2025 ENR Top 400 (Top Data Center Contractor, Top 3)
• 2025 ENR Top 100 Design-Build Firms (Design-Build Contractor, Top 5)
• 2025 ENR Top 100 Green Contractors (Green Contractor, Top 3)

Compensation

The salary range for this position considers factors including education, qualifications, skills, training, experience, certifications, internal equity, and location. Compensation decisions depend on the facts and circumstances of each case.