Software Engineer - Artificial Intelligence

Job description

Designation - Software Engineer - Artificial Intelligence Business Unit - Higher Education Department - Technology Experience Range - 4 years Location - Bengaluru, Karnataka About upGrad: upGrad is one of India’s leading higher edtech platforms, servi ng millions of learners across 100+ countr ies with strong university and industry partnerships. With a mission to enable career success through outcome-driven learning, upGrad is now building its next growth engine focused on undergraduate learners across India. About the Role: We are looking for a Software Engineer – Artificial Intelligence who is passionate about building intelligent systems that solve real-world problems. You’ll work at the intersection of machine learn in g, large language models (LL Ms), a nd backend engineer ing, turning research into production-ready systems. This is a hands-on engineering role with a strong emphasis on scalable AI integra ti on, prompt enginee ri ng, RAG (retrieval-augmented generat ion), and build ing intelligent APIs and microservices. What You'll Do • Design and build AI-powered applications u sing LLMs (OpenAI, LLaMA, Mistral, et c.), vector databases, and embedding models • Build scalable backend systems and APIs (Python, FastAPI, Node.js, etc.) to serve AI features in production. • Develop retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines and manage unstructured knowledge bases (PDFs, docs, audio). • Optimize inference pipelines for low latency and cost (e.g., with Ollama, vLLM, or LangChain). • Work with tools like Wh is per, Huggin gFace, and Pinecone/ChromaDB/Weaviate • Write clean, modular code and lead by example in engineering excellence. • Collaborate closely with product, design, and ML teams to rapidly prototype and ship feaures. Must-Have Skills: • 4+ years of software engineering experience (Python preferred). • Hands-on experience wit h LLMs, generat i ve AI, or custom ML workflows. • Strong understandi ng of NLP, embeddings, and vector search. • Experience with FastAPI / Flask / Django and REST APIs. • Solid grounding in Docker, Git, and CI/CD pipelines. • Comfortable with cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure) and containerized deployments. • Strong debugging, performance tuning, and system design skills. Good to Have: • Experience with LangChain, Haystack, or custom RAG frameworks. • Familiarity with Whisper (speech-to-text) or audio/video transcription pipelines. • Frontend knowledge in React.js is a bonus. • Experience scaling AI systems to serve 10k+ users. • MLOps exposure (MLFlow, Weights & Biases, etc.).