Role: AI Engineer
Employment: Contract, 90 - 120 days
Location: In-office in Austin
The Opportunity:
Efinity Mortgage is a growing mortgage lending operation preparing to scale production without scaling headcount at the same rate. We are launching a Digital Workforce Initiative: a focused, 90- 120-day effort to stand up a secure enterprise AI strategy and to build and deploy high-impact automation across our departments: underwriting, processing, compliance, finance, recruiting, marketing, and executive management.
We are looking for a hands-on Contract AI Solutions Architect to lead this initiative end-to-end — from assessment and architecture through to building production-ready tools and enabling our staff to use them. We want a builder who can pair strategic thinking with working software inside a regulated mortgage environment.
Potential to transition into Permanent
The Mission:
The goal is not simply to deploy AI tools. The goal is to create a digital workforce that augments our people across underwriting, processing, compliance, finance, recruiting, marketing, and executive management — increasing capacity and quality while reducing manual effort and vendor dependence. Over the long term, this initiative lays the foundation for an internal “Efinity AI” platform: a durable, owned capability rather than a collection of disconnected point solutions. Your work in these 90 - 120 days establishes the architecture, governance, and first wave of tools that the platform will grow from.
Responsibilities
Scope of Work:
Assess
- Conduct an AI opportunity assessment across departments, prioritizing by impact, feasibility, and risk.
- Map current workflows, systems, and data sources, including key vendor platforms in use today.
- Identify the highest-leverage automation candidates and sequence them into a build plan.
Architect
- Define an enterprise AI roadmap that connects near-term wins to the long-term Efinity AI platform vision.
- Establish a security and governance framework appropriate for a regulated mortgage operation (data handling, access control, model usage policies, auditability, and vendor risk).
- Select the model, tooling, and integration approach, balancing capability, cost, and control.
Build
- Develop 10–15 production-ready AI tools targeting the prioritized opportunities.
- Integrate tools into existing systems and workflows so they fit how staff actually work.
- Build for maintainability and handoff — documented, supportable, and owned internally after the engagement.
Enable
- Create a staff training and adoption plan, and lead hands-on enablement for the teams using each tool.
- Define how success is measured and instrument the tools so impact can be tracked over time.
- Hand off documentation, architecture decisions, and a forward roadmap to internal owners.
Key Deliverables
- An enterprise AI roadmap aligned to the long-term Efinity AI platform vision.
- A security and governance framework suitable for a regulated mortgage operation.
- A prioritized AI opportunity assessment across departments.
- 10–15 production-ready AI tools, integrated and documented.
- A staff training and adoption plan, with hands-on enablement delivered.
- A clean internal handoff: documentation, architecture decisions, and a forward roadmap.
Qualifications
Who We're Looking For:
- Proven experience designing and shipping AI/LLM-powered tools in production — not just prototypes or proofs of concept.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals: ability to build, integrate, and deploy working applications independently.
- Hands-on experience with modern AI platforms and APIs, retrieval/RAG patterns, prompt and workflow design, and AI tool orchestration.
- Experience integrating with existing business systems (CRMs, document platforms, internal databases, reporting tools).
- A working understanding of AI governance, data security, and privacy — and the judgment to apply it in a regulated environment.
- The ability to translate between executive strategy and technical execution, and to drive an initiative with minimal oversight.
- Availability for a hybrid arrangement based in Austin, TX, including regular on-site presence.
Compensation
$120 - $125 hourly
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