About the American Psychological Association (APA)
The American Psychological Association represents approximately 146,000 psychologists, students, and affiliates across the United States, Canada, and other countries. APA is a scientific and professional organization with approximately 500 employees and operates as a 501(c)(3) organization alongside its 501(c)(6) companion organization, APA Services, Inc.
About the Role
APA is seeking an AI Engineer to design, build, and operate agentic AI applications and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) services that automate multi-step business workflows safely and reliably. The role combines AI engineering, backend development, cloud deployment, and full-stack delivery to create production-ready systems with measurable performance and appropriate safeguards.
The AI Engineer will work with engineering, product, and business stakeholders to turn operational needs into practical AI solutions. Responsibilities include developing agentic workflows, building end-to-end RAG systems, evaluating AI quality, integrating enterprise tools and data sources, and maintaining reliable services on AWS. The position also involves researching emerging AI technologies and improving system performance, security, and maintainability.
Key Responsibilities
Design and build agentic AI applications that perform multi-step tasks with defined tool boundaries, permissions, validation, and safety controls.
Develop and maintain end-to-end RAG solutions covering data ingestion, embeddings, retrieval, and generation, with attention to relevance, latency, and reliability.
Establish and improve quality metrics for agent task success, tool-call correctness, retrieval relevance, and coverage.
Integrate tools and data sources through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar standard interfaces to support secure, reusable access.
Develop Angular and Node.js interfaces and APIs that make agentic AI and RAG capabilities accessible to business teams.
Deploy and operate AI services on AWS using services such as Lambda, ECS, or EKS.
Implement logging, monitoring, alerting, error handling, retries, fallbacks, and guardrails to support reliable AI operations.
Identify repetitive business processes and develop AI-driven automation solutions that integrate with enterprise systems and platforms.
Create and maintain technical documentation covering system architecture, interfaces, evaluation methods, and operational runbooks.
Collaborate with product and business stakeholders to define deliverables, understand workflows, and measure outcomes against agreed success criteria.
Advise stakeholders on opportunities to improve operational efficiency through agentic workflows and RAG-enabled automation.
Research and recommend emerging AI tools, evaluation methods, and responsible AI practices that improve system quality and reduce technical debt.
Perform other duties as assigned.
Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field; equivalent practical experience may be considered.
Five to ten years of software engineering experience, including one to two years building production-grade generative AI solutions involving agentic applications and/or RAG.
Hands-on experience taking both multi-step, tool-calling agentic applications and RAG systems into production, with deep expertise in at least one and solid working knowledge of the other.
Experience building and deploying production services and APIs on AWS, with attention to reliability, latency, and cost.
Advanced Python skills for backend and AI service development.
Experience with Angular and Node.js/TypeScript for full-stack delivery.
Practical experience with at least one agent framework, such as LangChain, LangGraph, or CrewAI.
Understanding of safe tool-calling design, including clear tool boundaries, permissions, and validation.
Solid understanding of RAG concepts, including chunking, embeddings, retrieval, and basic reranking.
Experience with at least one vector store, such as OpenSearch, Pinecone, or pgvector.
Ability to evaluate and improve AI systems using practical quality metrics, including agent task success and regression detection.
Working knowledge of AWS deployment using serverless services and/or containers, along with logging, monitoring, and alerting.
Familiarity with responsible and secure AI practices, including least privilege, data access controls, and guardrails.
Experience with Git-based source control, CI/CD, and reliable release and rollback practices.
Strong communication skills and a collaborative, delivery-oriented approach.
Work Arrangement and Schedule
Remote work is subject to approval under APA’s Flexible Work Policy.
Remote employees may not work from Alaska, California, Colorado, Guam, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Washington, or Wyoming.
APA operates on a 37.5-hour work week, with a one-hour lunch break each day.
Compensation and Benefits
APA determines salary based on several factors, including relevant experience, education, and previous staff or governance experience.
Benefits include
Remote work and flexible scheduling, subject to policy approval.
401(k) plan with employer matching of up to 4%.
Medical, dental, and vision insurance options.
Outpatient mental health benefits.
Paid personal and vacation time, plus 12 paid holidays.
Family and medical leave.
Tuition assistance.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
Short-term and long-term disability insurance.
Background Check
Final candidates must successfully complete a background check as a condition of employment. Any required consent forms and additional information will be provided during the final stages of the hiring process.
Equal Employment Opportunity The American Psychological Association is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, personal appearance, familial status, family responsibilities, matriculation, political affiliation, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.
The employer provides applicants with information about their rights under federal employment laws, including the Department of Labor’s Know Your Rights notice.