Director Java Coding Jobs in Rochester, MI (NOW HIRING)

Export Control & Compliance Notice:
Because this AI Systems Engineering role directly supports data and systems subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR), candidate eligibility is strictly governed by US federal law. Applicants must qualify as a "U.S. Person" (U.S. Citizen, Lawful Permanent Resident/Green Card Holder, Asylee, or Refugee).
We cannot provide or transfer visa sponsorship for this position. Candidates holding temporary student or work visas (F-1 OPT/CPT, H-1B, TN, etc.) are strictly ineligible for this role due to these federal compliance constraints. [
Are you the kind of engineer who wants to see your work deployed, trusted, and used in real customer environments-not left in notebooks or demos? Do you enjoy designing the systems behind AI agents, RAG applications, and data pipelines that run in real environments with data, security, and reliability constraints? If you're energized by architecture, data engineering, and modern AI delivery, this role is for you.
About Us
FTE Factory Advisors helps manufacturing and operational organizations unlock higher performance - boosting revenue, reducing costs, and driving compliance through people-first strategies. Our clients are decision-makers at the top of their industries, and they trust us to deliver lasting impact.
The Opportunity
We're seeking an AI Systems Engineer to design and build the technical foundation behind our AI-enabled solutions on customer sites. This role sits at the intersection of software engineering, data engineering, and AI architecture. You'll be responsible for turning business objectives into AI solutions that operate in production environments.
You'll serve as the technical counterpart to FTE's manufacturing and operations experts-bringing structure, rigor, and execution discipline to AI-enabled solutions in real customer environments. You'll own core architecture decisions, lead hands-on implementation, and develop reusable patterns as our AI delivery scales across clients and use cases.
Requirements
What You Will Do

• Serve as the technical lead for on-site AI delivery, owning solutions from concept through production deployment, ensuring they are trusted by stakeholders and designed for reuse across future engagements

• Work on-site with manufacturing leaders, engineers, and operators to observe processes, and translate ambiguous business requirements into clear technical designs

• Own the design and implementation of AI agents and workflows that solve real business problems and provide measurable impact

• Establish prompt, retrieval, and orchestration components for AI systems

• Integrate AI solutions with customer applications, APIs, and structured/unstructured data sources

• Partner with Network & Security teams to design secure data access, identity, and information retrieval architectures

• Implement monitoring, logging, evaluation, and reliability controls to ensure production readiness

• Support internal teams by mentoring, reviewing designs, and raising the overall technical bar

Essential Requirements

• 2+ Years of software engineering fundamentals with a bias toward clean, maintainable code (Languages such as Python, Java, R, C#, or equivalent)

• Experience with AI agent frameworks, RAG architectures, and orchestration platforms (e.g., LangGraph, Haystack, or equivalent platforms)

• Understanding of data modeling, data access patterns, and system integration, including hands-on experience working with enterprise relational databases and APIs (e.g., Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, or equivalent relational systems)

• Proven ability to design for scalability, reliability, security, and long-term maintainability

• Conceptual understanding of MLOps, monitoring, and operational reliability practices

• Ability to operate without clean APIs or ideal data

• Comfort collaborating ad communicating with non-technical stakeholders and explaining technical information clearly and concisely to stakeholders.

• Strong problem-solving ability, including diagnosing system-level issues, working through incomplete or messy data, and making sound architectural tradeoffs under real-world constraints.

• Self-directed, pragmatic, and focused on delivering high-quality working systems-not just ideas.

Bonus Points If You Have

• Demonstrated ability to design, build, and troubleshoot complex systems including data pipelines, APIs, distributed systems, or platform services in real-world environments

• Experience working in industrial, operational, or highly regulated environments

• Experience integrating solutions into existing ("brownfield") enterprise or operational environments, including legacy systems, data sources, and vendor-managed platforms

• Practical experience with MLOps, system observability, or reliability engineering in production environments

• Experience with Cloud, NoSQL Databases, and Microsoft Dataverse.

• Experience with enterprise and cloud native orchestration platforms (e.g., AWS Bedrock AgentCore, Microsoft Power Automate, Google Cloud Vertex, or other equivalent cloud-native platforms)

• Understanding of Model Context Protocol (MCP) and/or Agent-to-Agent (A2A) emerging standards

• Background designing secure enterprise data access patterns

• Experience in consulting, enterprise systems, or production AI environments

• Experience standardizing platforms across multiple clients or teams

Why Join FTE Performance

• Build AI systems that are deployed, used, and relied on-not shelved

• Work directly with senior leaders, operators, and domain experts

• Help shape the firm's AI architecture and technical direction from the ground up

• Join a growing, high-performance team that values outcomes over bureaucracy

• Competitive compensation, benefits, and meaningful influence on what gets built

Benefits
We are committed to diversity and inclusion and offer a competitive wage and benefits package.