AI Engineer (hands-on)
Western Environmental Pty Ltd
Mô tả công việc
Build the AI function at an Australian engineering company. Hanoi based, hands-on, and yours to own. This is our first artificial intelligence hire. You would report to a company director in Perth, you would be the only person doing this work, and you would build it yourself. We care more about what you have shipped and how you work with people than about how many years you have been doing it. About us: An environmental remediation and technology company of about forty people, based in Perth, Australia. We clean up contaminated land, decommission industrial plant and develop our own treatment technology, including a smouldering combustion process we invented and hold the patents on. We work across Australia and Southeast Asia, including dioxin and contaminated land projects in Vietnam with our partner there. We are not a software company, which is exactly why this role exists. Where you would sit: You would work from the Hanoi office of our Vietnamese partner, an environmental consultancy we work with on projects here, with a desk alongside their team. You would not be working alone from home. That partner would be your legal employer in Vietnam and would handle your pay, tax and social security. Western Environmental would direct your work. Perth runs on Australian Western Standard Time, one hour ahead of Hanoi, so there is no awkward overlap and no night work. Expect one or two trips to Perth in the first year, including time in the field, so you understand what the business actually does. We pay for those. What you would be doing: First, fix our own systems: Laboratory data and field records that take a week of manual handling before anyone can analyse them. Several thousand technical documents, standards and past reports that nobody can search properly, so the same question gets answered from scratch every time. Regulatory reporting where the format is rigid, the content is not, and the drafting eats senior people's weeks. Then, get forty people using what you build: Most are technical but not software people, and some are sceptical with reason. The tools have to be good enough that people choose to use them. You would put sensible guard rails around client and project data so people can use the tools safely. Then, build the capability into the business. Two of our engineers want to move into this work, and developing them is part of the role. You would stay the person who designs and builds. This is not a step towards managing a team. After that we expect some of what you build to become commercial in its own right. That intention is real and the detail is undefined, and we would rather say so plainly than dress it up.
Yêu cầu công việc
The Stack Claude, the Model Context Protocol and Python. A deliberate choice, made after our director spent three months building with it himself. If your background is Copilot and the Power Platform, this is not a good fit, and we would rather you knew before you applied. About You: You have built systems with large language models that other people use. Retrieval, agentic workflows, tool use, evaluation. Not prototypes that never left your laptop. Strong Python. You can hold a technical conversation in English, written and spoken, with people who are not developers. Almost everything you do will be explained in writing to engineers and scientists in Australia, so this matters more here than in most roles. You are curious, you pick up new tools because they are better, and you are comfortable working out loud when you do not yet know the answer. You can explain a decision, including one that turned out to be wrong. Four to eight years is plenty. We are not counting years. If you have four and a track record of shipping, apply. We are not looking for a researcher, a manager, or someone who needs an established platform or a large team to work against. There is no team. You would be building things yourself every week, including the unglamorous parts. A note on AI-written applications We use AI tools every day and we do not mind if you use one to help write your application. We do mind if what it says is not true. We check everything factual, and the first conversation is an unscripted technical discussion of the work you describe. If you cannot talk through it in detail, the application ends there. How to apply Apply through the Apply button on this job posting. Please submit your CV, including additional attachments containing the following information: Attachment 1. Supporting Statement (max one page, in English): Describing one system you have built using a large language model. Tell us what it did and who used it, the employer or client, the city, the size of the team, and what you personally did as distinct from what the team did. Tell us what went wrong and what you did about it. Give us one real number: how many people used it, how much it processed, what it cost to run, or how long it took. Attachment 2. A Project Sample containing: At least one accessible link to work we can review (repository, deployed application, package, or article). One sentence about something you built and later discarded. One thing you believe is wrong, risky, or overrated about our technology stack. We will not shortlist an application with no link we can open. Links to code or published work count for more than a longer CV. The company director and technical lead read every application themselves. By submitting an application through this platform, you confirm your agreement to the consent requirements set out in Section 10 of the Candidate Privacy Notice. Candidates who wish Western Environmental Pty Ltd to retain their personal data for up to 12 months for consideration for future roles should clearly state this in their application, in accordance with Question 4 of Section 10 of the Candidate Privacy Notice.
Quyền lợi
You report to a company director. There is no layer between you and the decision. No existing platform, no committee and no legacy system to work around. You choose the tools. A desk in a real office in Hanoi with colleagues around you, not a laptop at your kitchen table. Salary reviewed at six months, with a compensation discussion at twelve. Local employment with proper entitlements, tax and social security. Real problems attached to physical work: contaminated sites, industrial decommissioning and treatment technology we own, which you are welcome to go and see. One or two paid trips to Perth in the first year, including field time.