Senior AI Platform Engineer

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Senior AI Platform Engineer

ENTERPRISE AI INFRASTRUCTURE & LLM OPERATIONS

Department: Information Technology | Employment Type: Full-Time | Location: Remote, with occasional travel to main campus (Williamsburg, KY) as needed

Help Us Build What’s Next in AI

At the University of the Cumberlands, we’re building a new enterprise AI environment that brings powerful, locally hosted AI technologies to students, faculty, and staff. We’re looking for a Senior AI Platform Engineer who enjoys building from the ground up, tackling challenging engineering problems, and shaping how AI works in higher education.

You’ll help design, deploy, and grow an on-premises environment powered by NVIDIA GPU infrastructure and NVIDIA AI Enterprise, supporting large language models (LLMs), high-performance inference, and secure APIs. You’ll partner with infrastructure, cybersecurity, enterprise applications, and our emerging AI Lab to turn ambitious ideas into dependable services.

What You’ll Do

· Build the foundation. Design, deploy, and manage on-premises and hybrid AI infrastructure, including NVIDIA GPU environments and NVIDIA AI Enterprise.

· Bring models to life. Deploy, optimize, and maintain locally hosted LLMs and inference services using NVIDIA NIM, vLLM, Ollama, or comparable tools.

· Make AI accessible. Build secure APIs and services connecting approved AI capabilities to University applications and users.

· Keep things running. Monitor performance, optimize GPU resources, troubleshoot issues, and maintain security, reliability, and scalability.

· Automate and improve. Use Linux, containers, scripting, and platform engineering practices to streamline operations.

· Collaborate and shape what’s next. Partner across IT and the AI Lab, evaluate emerging technologies, and influence platform architecture.

What You’ll Bring

· Significant professional experience in platform engineering, DevOps, systems engineering, or enterprise infrastructure, including demonstrated responsibility for deploying and supporting production AI/ML environments.

· Hands-on experience deploying or administering NVIDIA GPU-based AI infrastructure, NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NVIDIA NIM, or comparable AI/ML and enterprise inference platforms.

· Strong Linux, networking, containers, and modern infrastructure knowledge.

· Scripting and automation experience with Python, Bash, or similar tools.

· Familiarity with APIs, authentication, security, and monitoring; strong troubleshooting and collaboration skills.

· Bachelor’s degree in a related technical field or equivalent professional experience.

Even Better If You Have

· Direct experience with NVIDIA AI Enterprise and NVIDIA NIM; CUDA or GPU performance optimization.

· Experience with vLLM, Ollama, Hugging Face, Docker, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, or CI/CD.

· Knowledge of MLOps/LLMOps, vector databases, embeddings, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

· Experience with enterprise API gateways, hybrid cloud, higher education, or research computing.

Why This Role Is Different

· Build from the beginning. Help establish a new AI platform and shape its long-term direction.

· Work with powerful technology. Get hands-on with NVIDIA GPU computing, enterprise AI software, and open-weight language models.

· Make an impact. Support teaching, learning, research, and institutional innovation.

· Have a voice. Help choose tools, set technical standards, and improve the platform as it grows.

Let’s Build Something Great

We’re looking for an experienced engineer who brings deep technical expertise, strong problem-solving skills, and a proven ability to design, deploy, and manage enterprise AI infrastructure.

The ideal candidate has hands-on experience with GPU-accelerated computing, locally hosted large language models, and production AI platforms, along with the technical judgment to lead complex implementations from the ground up.

If you’re ready to bring your expertise to an exciting new initiative and help establish the foundation for enterprise AI at the University of the Cumberlands, we’d love to hear from you.

Cumberlands is different by design. Our employees exemplify our motto in the pursuit of a

“life-more-abundant.”

About Us

Located in the heart of Appalachia, University of the Cumberlands (UC) is an institution of regional distinction that offers undergraduate degrees in more than 40 major fields of study, along with several pre-professional, graduate and doctoral programs. With a total enrollment of more than 20,000 students, UC is one of the largest and fastest growing private universities in Kentucky and is devoted to preparing students for the future through hands-on, experiential learning and research.

The University of the Cumberlands does not illegally discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, disability, age, religion, genetic information, veteran status, because a person is a smoker or nonsmoker, or any other basis on which the University is prohibited from discrimination under local, state, or federal law, in its employment or in the provision of its services, including but not limited to its programs and activities, admissions, educational policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other University -administered programs. In order to fulfill its purpose, the University may legally discriminate on the basis of religion in employment, and the University has sought and been granted exemption from certain regulations promulgated under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 which conflict with the University's religious tenets.