Senior Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engineer

Job Description

The CSIR is seeking a Senior Artificial Intelligence Engineer in the Emerging Digital Technologies for Fourth Industrial Revolution (EDT4IR) Research Centre. The role involves designing, developing, and implementing AI systems architecture and solutions, mentoring junior staff, and contributing to innovative AI solutions. The position is based in Pretoria and reports to the Research Group Leader.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science/engineering, electrical/electronic engineering, information technology, or related field
• Honours or Master’s degree (advantageous)
• Five years’ experience in artificial intelligence/machine learning and software development in AI technologies
• Experience in applied machine learning with regression, classification, and other models for supervised learning
• Experience in natural language processing and understanding, including large language models
• Experience building multimodal models
• Experience with unstructured data
• Experience in big-data unsupervised learning
• Experience in data platform engineering
• Demonstrated experience in bringing theoretical ML approaches to large-scale production systems
• Experience with cloud-based platforms (AWS, IBM Cloud, Azure)
• Proficiency in building AI models with deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow, Keras, or Theano)
• Ability to select hardware to run ML models with required latency
• Exposure to project management
• Knowledge of programming in modern object-oriented languages with open-source development tools
• Object-oriented software engineering skills
• Strong quantitative skills (mathematics/statistics/computer science)
• Demonstrated ability to supervise, mentor, and develop junior staff
• Skills in analytical thinking, flexibility, adaptability, investigative orientation, planning, organizing, problem-solving, verbal and written communication, teamwork, self-management, systems-level thinking, and multi-disciplinary knowledge

Responsibilities

• Develop innovative solutions in AI and stay updated with new technologies
• Design, develop, and implement AI systems architecture and solutions
• Supervise and mentor junior staff in AI expertise
• Generate and contribute to science, engineering, and technology activity outputs (e.g., reports, guidelines, system requirements, peer-reviewed publications, technology and software packages)
• Understand and interpret client requirements through user requirement analysis and proposals
• Participate in external task teams or committees in relevant domains