ML Software Engineer Visa Sponsorship Jobs in Illinois

Who We Are

Join a team that puts its People First! As a member of First American's family of companies, National Commercial Services provides single-point service for simple to multi-property/multi-state national commercial real estate transactions. Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential. Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list for ten consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ+ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists. First American will always strive to be a great place to work, for all.

What We Do

We are looking for a hands-on Senior Software Engineer to serve as the technical owner for AI/ML initiatives within First American Technology. This role bridges business stakeholders, offshore delivery teams, and internal AI/ML platform teams to deliver production-grade AI-enabled applications. This is not a solution architect or liaison-only role. The successful candidate is expected to write code, debug production issues, review deliverables, and ship improvements across AI/ML components and full stack application layers. You will own technical execution during US business hours, including coordination, incident response, and rapid resolution of business-impacting issues.

How You’ll Contribute

Technical Ownership & Delivery:

- Own end-to-end technical execution for AI/ML application initiatives, ensuring delivery against scope, quality, and timelines.
- Translate business and functional requirements into clear technical designs and actionable engineering tasks for delivery teams.
- Coordinate execution across offshore teams, AI platform teams, and stakeholders; communicate status, risks, and dependencies.
- Review offshore deliverables (code, pipelines, infrastructure changes) for quality, performance, security, and compliance.
- Fully own projects in your area, identifying gaps/opportunities and driving solutions to completion.

Hands-On Engineering (Expected):

- Actively develop, test, and deploy production features across backend services, APIs, and UI integration.
- Provide maintenance of developed software including regression testing, debugging, and root-cause analysis.
- Build tools and produce technical documentation to improve developer efficiency and alignment.
- Build and maintain test automation suites and quality gates.

AI/ML & Generative AI:

- Implement and support Machine Learning and Generative AI solutions, including LLM-based systems.
- Build and support Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines and vector search integrations.
- Apply prompt engineering, LLM orchestration, and agentic workflow frameworks where appropriate.
- Support model/service evaluation, monitoring, and performance tuning (quality, latency, cost).
- Ensure responsible AI practices and governance standards are followed.

Cloud, DevOps & Operations:

- Operate and support AI-enabled applications in Azure and/or AWS.
- Maintain CI/CD and operational pipelines (DevOps/MLOps) to enable reliable releases.
- Own production stability during US business hours: triage incidents, coordinate fixes, and implement long-term corrective actions.
- Ensure security, reliability, and cost awareness of deployed solutions.

What You’ll Bring

Required:

- 5–8 years of overall software engineering experience, including full stack application development and production support.
- Advanced proficiency in Python and strong software engineering fundamentals (design, testing, debugging).
- Hands-on experience delivering AI/ML or Generative AI solutions in production (LLM-enabled apps, RAG, orchestration).
- Experience with RAG architectures and vector databases / vector search.
- Experience with cloud platforms (Azure and/or AWS).
- Strong troubleshooting, incident management, and root-cause analysis skills.
- Experience working effectively with distributed/offshore delivery teams.

Good to Have:

- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
- Financial services, insurance, or other regulated domain experience.
- Familiarity with CI/CD, containerization, IaC, and MLOps tooling.

Pay Range: $185,100-$198,600

This hiring range is a reasonable estimate of the base pay range for this position at the time of posting. Pay is based on a number of factors which may include job-related knowledge, skills, experience, business requirements and geographic location.

Note that the following statements only apply to candidates who will be working from an unincorporated area within Los Angeles County.

First American will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws (e.g., the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act).

First American intends to conduct a review of an applicant’s criminal history in connection with a conditional offer. First American reasonably believes that a criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following material job duties for this position potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: handling of confidential, proprietary or trade secret information belonging to First American or its customers, administrating or facilitating financial transactions, and the ability to meet customer-imposed criminal history requirements.

What We Offer

By choice, we don’t simply accept individuality – we embrace it, we support it, and we thrive on it! Our People First Culture celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s the key to our success. We are proud to foster an authentic and inclusive workplace For All. You are free and encouraged to bring your entire, unique self to work. First American is an equal opportunity employer in every sense of the term.

Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.