Specialist Software Engineer - AI

Description

Position at MTA Headquarters

JOB TITLE:

Specialist Software Engineer - AI

SALARY RANGE:

$114,070 - $134,641

DEPT/DIV:

Information Technology

SUPERVISOR:

Product Director Data Science & Eng

LOCATION:

2 Broadway, New York, NY 10004

HOURS OF WORK:

9:00 am - 5:30 pm (7.5 hours/day) or as required

This position is eligible for teleworking, which is currently 2 days per week. New hires are eligible to apply 30 days after their effective date of hire.

Opening:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is North America's largest transportation network, serving a population of 15.3 million people across a 5,000-square-mile travel area surrounding New York City, Long Island, southeastern New York State, and Connecticut. The MTA network comprises the nation's largest bus fleet and more subway and commuter rail cars than all other U.S. transit systems combined. MTA strives to provide a safe and reliable commute, excellent customer service, and rewarding opportunities.

Summary:

The MTA transportation network has very large systems and infrastructure for financial, business, automated train, transportation, power, and physical security. The MTA IT Department is centrally responsible for providing a full range of Information and Operational Technology services to the MTA agencies and administrative units through its operating and support units. Services are provided on a 7/24/365 basis in support of the MTA organization and its ridership. MTA IT's Product Development group is empowered, multi-functional teams focused on the end-to-end management of development products from strategy to delivery. Using innovative processes and tools, the teams are responsible for developing and maintaining highly effective, secure, and innovative transportation, operational, and back-end information systems to support MTA goals and priorities.

This role, as Software AI Engineer, is to design, implement, and maintain innovative AI solutions that solve real-world problems and drive significant business results. Leverage your expertise in machine learning, deep learning frameworks, and software development to build robust and scalable AI systems. You'll collaborate closely with engineers, data scientists, and business stakeholders to ensure your solutions meet industry best practices and positively impact the company. Contribute software development methods, tools, and techniques, and apply agreed standards and tools to achieve well-engineered outcomes.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to understand business needs, define requirements, and translate them into effective AI solutions.
• Develop and maintain machine learning models, ensuring they are accurate, efficient, and scalable.
• Design and implement AI solutions using large datasets, focusing on data security and user privacy.
• Orchestrate the development and maintenance of CI/CD pipelines for deploying and testing AI applications.
• Ensure governance, security, and compliance of all cloud-based AI solutions
• Implement best practices for AI model deployment, monitoring, and maintenance.
• Write well-documented, clean, and maintainable code, adhering to best practices and methodologies.
• Continuously iterate and improve upon existing models and solution design/implementation processes, incorporating feedback and lessons learned to enhance accuracy, performance, scalability, and security.
• Stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in AI, machine learning, and Azure services, and apply this knowledge to improve our solutions.
• Defines and manages scoping and requirements definition and ensures traceability to source.
• Designs, codes, verifies, tests, documents, amends, and refactors complex programs/scripts and integration software services. Uses appropriate modelling techniques following agreed software design standards, guidelines, patterns, and methodology. Testing: Develops and executes test plans and test cases; implements scalable and reliable automated tests and frameworks.
• Application Support: Maintains application support processes and uses application management software tools to investigate issues, prioritize and diagnose incidents, collect performance statistics, and create reports.
• Project/Product Management: Defines, documents, and executes small projects or sub-projects. May act as product owner for one or more lower-value products or services, managing elements of the product life cycle to meet customer/user needs and achieve financial or other targets.
• Quality & Safety Assurance: Plans, organizes, and conducts quality and safety assessments and suggests opportunities for improvement. Contributes to identifying, analyzing, and documenting hazards and safety risks.
• Supplier Management: Monitors and reports on supplier performance, customer satisfaction, adherence to security requirements, and market intelligence.
• Skills Development: Continuously develops and maintains personal knowledge of software engineering practices, emerging trends, and technologies.
• May mentor less experienced staff

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's Degree in Arts/Sciences (BA/BS)
• Minimum 3 years of relevant experience. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• Prefer at least one certification in the current platform/domain/technical skill. Possible certifications could be, but are not limited to:
• Certified Software Engineer or equivalent, Agile Project Management, technical certifications relevant to the specific position (and software products and toolsets used in that position), experience with System Development Life Cycle with the specific methodologies in use in the Department.
• A software engineering industry certification, including but not limited to: Certified Scrum Developer (CSD), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP), Certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP), Amazon Certified: AWS Certified Developer, Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer, Certified Software Test Professional (CSTP)
• Experience administering and developing workflows and specialized UIs in Alfresco or other Document Management systems

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Hands-on experience in AI, ML, model development, and deployment in a business setting.
• Strong knowledge of machine learning architectures.
• Strong programming skills in languages such as Python and familiarity with relevant libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, NumPy, PyTorch).
• Experience with deep learning and neural network development.
• Strong statistical foundation, with in-depth knowledge of supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised machine learning models.
• Good understanding and experience with AI services such as AI Search, Document Intelligence, NLP, and conversational AI.
• Experience working with Generative AI models, with a deep understanding of their capabilities, prompting strategies, model performance, and inherent limitations.
• Experience writing complex, highly optimized SQL queries.
• Solid understanding of software engineering fundamentals. Experience with software development best practices, including version control, automated testing, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD).
• Experience building, configuring, and maintaining secure ML cloud infrastructure. Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code technologies such as Terraform.
• Experience with container services, e.g., Kubernetes.
• Good understanding of cloud security best practices.

Preferred Technical Skills:

• Data Structures and Algorithms (Thorough Knowledge/Fully Proficient)
• Database Management (Thorough Knowledge/Fully Proficient)
• Web Development (Thorough Knowledge/Fully Proficient)
• DevOps (Thorough Knowledge/Fully Proficient)
• Operating Systems (Thorough Knowledge/Fully Proficient)
• Cybersecurity, including encryption and authentication (Thorough Knowledge/Fully Proficient)
• Cloud Computing (Thorough Knowledge/Fully Proficient)
• Active Listening, Attention to Detail, Customer Service
• Prioritization, Problem Solving, Effective Verbal and Written Communication

Competencies:

• Collaborates: Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives
• Cultivates Innovation: Creating new and better ways for the organization to be successful
• Customer Focus: Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions
• Values Diversity: Recognizing the value that different perspectives and cultures bring to an organization
• Communicates Effectively: Developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences

Other Information:

Pursuant to the New York State Public Officers Law & the MTA Code of Ethics, all employees who hold a policymaking position must file an Annual Statement of Financial Disclosure (FDS) with the NYS Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (the "Commission").

Equal Employment Opportunity:

MTA and its subsidiary and affiliated agencies are Equal Opportunity Employers, including with respect to veteran status and individuals with disabilities.

The MTA encourages qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and abilities, including military service members, to apply.