AI Platform Engineer (Hybrid To New Hartford, NY Office Or Charlotte, NC Office)

The Company

At Utica National Insurance Group, over 1,400 employees countrywide take our corporate promise to heart every day: To make people feel secure, appreciated, and respected.

While we had humble beginnings in 1914, today the Utica National Insurance Group is an "A" rated $2B award-winning, nationally recognized organization providing personal and commercial property & casualty insurance products and services.

Our Mission is to continually meet the needs of our policyholders, agent/customers and employees resulting in sustainable profitable growth in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

We are proud to sell our products through more than 2,200 independent insurance agents around the country as we have been since 1928. These agents provide their clients with valuable insight and resources. And, as the second-largest insurer of Agents' Errors and Omissions (E&O) business in the United States, we insure many of the agents who work with our policyholders.

Our purpose is to make people feel secure, appreciated, and respected. These Values define the character of our employees. They personify Utica National - describing what it means to "be Utica National" and how we approach doing business. Together, with our agents, we are committed to providing our mutual policyholders with valuable services and products to help them feel secure.

What you will do:

Platform Evaluation & Adoption- Evaluate capabilities to determine how to support prioritized use cases; Lead proofs-of-concept (PoCs) and pilot programs to validate usability within our ecosystems; Collaborate with internal teams to ensure secure and effective use of AI-driven tools.

Platform Architecture & Implementation- Design and deploy AI/ML platform components using Azure AI Foundry, Azure Machine Learning, Azure AI Search, Azure Storage, Key Vault, and Private Endpoints/VNET; Establish secure connectivity patterns, RBAC, and identity management with Microsoft Entra ID; Implement observability and telemetry using Azure Monitor and Application Insights.

MLOps & DevOps Enablement- Build CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub for model training, evaluation, and deployment; Manage versioning for datasets, models, prompts, and agent configurations; Automate environment provisioning and enforce promotion gates for Development Test UAT Production.

Agent & Copilot Integration- Enable conversational experiences using Microsoft Copilot Studio and integrate advanced use cases with Azure AI Foundry; Connect enterprise data sources (SharePoint, Dataverse, Graph connectors) securely for grounding AI agents.

Security & Compliance- Implement governance controls for PII, data classification, and auditability; Define SLAs, cost guardrails, and incident response playbooks for AI services.

Insurance Domain Integration- Collaborate with business units (Policy, Claims, Underwriting, Customer Experience) to align AI platform capabilities with operational needs.

Performs other duties as assigned.

Conforms with all corporate policies and procedures.

Education: Bachelor's Degree Preferred.

Experience:

• 5+ years in software development and solution design with cloud platforms (preferably Microsoft Azure) required;
• 2+ years hands-on experience in AI/ML (LLMs or classical ML), including deployment and operationalization required; Less than 2 years Proven experience with Azure AI services: AI Foundry, Azure ML, AI Search, Key Vault, Monitor, Container Registry required;
• Familiarity with enterprise security practices, private networking, and governance frameworks. required;
• Experience with and strong understanding of MLOps, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code required; Experience with Copilot Studio and conversational AI integration preferred;
• Insurance industry experience. Knowledge of policy, claims, underwriting, and compliance requirements preferred;
• Experience with vector search, prompt engineering, and responsible AI principles preferred;
• Exposure to Microsoft Graph and enterprise data connectors preferred;
• Ability to design scalable architectures with cost optimization and operational resilience preferred.

Salary Range: $112,000 to $149,000

The final salary to be paid and position within the internal salary range is reflective of the employee's work experience, their geographic location, education, certification(s), scope and responsibilities in the role, and additional qualifications.

Benefits:

We believe strongly that talented people are core to our success and are attracted to companies that provide competitive pay, comprehensive benefits packages, career advancement and challenging work opportunities. We offer a Comprehensive Benefits Plan for full time employees that include the following:

• Medical and Prescription Drug Benefit
• Dental Benefit
• Vision Benefit
• Life Insurance and Disability Benefits
• 401(k) Profit Sharing and Investment Plan (Includes annual Company financial contribution and discretionary Profit Sharing contribution based upon annual company financial results)
• Health Savings Account (HSA)
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Tuition Assistance, Training, and Professional Designations
• Company-Paid Family Leave
• Adoption/Surrogacy Assistance Benefit
• Voluntary Benefits - Group Accident Insurance, Hospital Indemnity, Critical Illness, Legal, ID Theft Protection, Pet Insurance
• Student Loan Refinancing Services
• Care.com Membership with Back-up Care, Senior Solutions
• Business Travel Accident Insurance
• Matching Gifts program
• Paid Volunteer Day
• Employee Referral Award Program
• Wellness programs
• Personal Insurance Discount

Additional Information:

This position is a full time salaried, exempt (non overtime eligible) position.

As part of our hiring process, candidates who have accepted a formal offer must be willing to undergo a comprehensive background check and drug screen; additional screening for credit or MVR may be required for some positions.

Utica National is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Apply now and find out what it's like to be a part of an amazing team, thrive in an exciting environment and work for a company you can be proud of. Once you complete your application, you can monitor your status in the hiring process by logging into your profile. A representative from our Talent Acquisition team will be in touch regarding any change in your candidacy.

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